Shell Programming and Scripting

I am obviously missing something here, but the following simple command is giving me problems:

sed 'i\extratext' filename.txt

I receive "sed: command garbled: i\extratext' "

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

You need to enter the command like this

Code:

sed 'i\<ENTER>
extratext' filename.txt

i.e. press ENTER after the i\ bit.

Newer GNU sed will also understand sed 'i extratext' filename.txt

Cheers
ZB

Thanks zazzy! That was the problem. Guess I should have looked at the man pages closer.

The insert works fine with static text, but I would like to insert a variable. I'm essentially trying to get a directory listing and insert the filename above every row in the respective file.

for file in dir1/*.*
do
filename=${file##*/}
sed "i\
${filename}" $file >> combined.txt
done

This gives the following:
sed: command garbled: file1.txt

In replaced the double quotes (") in the code above with just single quotes (') simply inserts ${filename}.

Any way to provide a variable name to the insert command?

Thanks.

Thanks zazzy! That was the problem. Guess I should have looked at the man pages closer.

The insert works fine with static text, but I would like to insert a variable. I'm essentially trying to get a directory listing and insert the filename above every row in the respective file.

for file in dir1/*.*
do
filename=${file##*/}
sed "i\
${filename}" $file >> combined.txt
done

This gives the following:
sed: command garbled: file1.txt

In replaced the double quotes (") in the code above with just single quotes (') simply inserts ${filename}.

Any way to provide a variable name to the insert command?

Thanks.

Try this....

Code:

filename=${file##*/}
sed 'i\
'${filename} $file >> combined.txt

Notice where the single quotes have been placed

Cheers
ZB

Awesome zazzy!!

I would have thought the single quote would go after the variable name, but apparently not. Guess that's what being new at sed gets ya! What's the rationale for putting the single quote before the variable name?

Thanks again!!

If the single quote was after the variable name, then it wouldn't get evaluated. Keeping the variable, in essence, unquoted, allows it to be evaluated by the shell before the sed command uses the value.

Cheers
ZB