Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello Everyone,

I need to read an encrypted password from the user and update that value in an xml file. I am trying to use "sed" for searching the appropriate tag and replacing this new value that get from the user. Since the encrypted password can contain special characters(like /,\,&,etc), the "sed" command is coming garbled. Could somebody please help to find an efficient solution for this problem?

Is there a way to instruct sed command not to consider any special characters in the replacement string?

Something like

Code:

s/${key}/"what ever string"/

Or

Any efficient way to put escape sequence for the special characters?

I tried something like

Code:

's/\|/\\|/g' , 's|\\|\\\\|g'

to escape individual special characters. But this is not working for special characters like &,/ etc.... Is it possible to write any generic pattern which can handle any special characters.

Very much appreciate any help

Thanks,
Martin