Shell Programming and Scripting

So you want the line that contains xValue anything; to become xValue 19.1434;, no other constraints/conditions? Try

Code:

sed 's/xValue .*;$/xValue 19.1434;/' file > newfile

Dear Don Cragun,

You are expert.
I would like to see your posts with little explanation like in this command lines you are doing something like editing the file and saving in some temp files then copying to the original file (correct me if my understanding is wrong).

Thanks & Regards,
linuxUser_

The command:

Code:

sed 's/xValue .*;/xValue 19.1434;/' file > file.$$ && mv file.$$ file

directs the output from sed to a temporary file whose name ends with a period followed by the process ID of the shell that is running this command. If the sed command succeeds (exit status 0), the mv command is executed to replace the original file with the temporary file.

If the sed utility detects an error, the original file will not be changed, but after seeing the diagnostic message(s) produced by sed, you may need to manually remove the temporary file.