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How to swap to words in a file?

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# 1  
Old 08-07-2015
How to swap to words in a file?
Hi,

I have a file with certain lines in it.
i want to swap every occurance of word A with B and every occurrance of word B with A.

Example
file.txt
Code:
Unix is a great OS.
Linux support graphical user intrface.
unix and linux are both same.

Output
file.txt
Code:
Linux is a great OS.
Unix support graphical user intrface.
linux and unix are both same.

I tried with the below command but its not working.

Code:
sed -i 's/\(unix\)\(linux\)/\2\1/gi' file.txt

# 2  
Old 08-07-2015
A few points:-
  • You have a mixture of Linux and linux and your code does not cater for that
  • You are only doing one substitution, and will (if it works) leave you with linux for everything.
  • Linux and Unix are not strictly the same.
Maybe consider either three steps (convert unix to @@@@@@, convert linux to unix and then convert @@@@@@ to linux) or a sed script file to do both updates.



Robin
# 3  
Old 08-07-2015
Try using an intermediate pattern (using GNU sed with the i flag extension):
Code:
sed 's/unix/@@/gi; s/linux/Unix/gi; s/@@/Linux/gi' file

-- edit --
Robin mentioned the same...
# 4  
Old 08-07-2015
Quote:
Originally Posted by Little
Hi,

I have a file with certain lines in it.
i want to swap every occurance of word A with B and every occurrance of word B with A.

Example
file.txt
Code:
Unix is a great OS.
Linux support graphical user intrface.
unix and linux are both same.

Output
file.txt
Code:
Linux is a great OS.
Unix support graphical user intrface.
linux and unix are both same.

I tried with the below command but its not working.

Code:
sed -i 's/\(unix\)\(linux\)/\2\1/gi' file.txt

Hello Little,

Following may help you, it will look for exactly word Linux and change it to Unix and word linux to unix, not sure if you are ok without case sensitive substitute also.
Code:
 awk '{gsub(/Unix/,"@@@@",$0);gsub(/unix/,"@@@",$0)gsub("Linux","Unix",$0);gsub("linux","unix",$0);gsub(/@@@@/,"Linux",$0);gsub(/@@@/,"linux",$0);print}' Input_file

Thanks,
R. Singh
# 5  
Old 08-07-2015
awk with an array:
Code:
awk 'BEGIN {A["linux"]="Unix"; A["unix"]="Linux"} {for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) if ((xi=tolower($i)) in A) $i=A[xi]} {print}' file.txt

Trying to retain the case of the first character, as Ravinder did:
Code:
awk 'BEGIN {A["linux"]="unix"; A["Linux"]="Unix"; A["unix"]="linux"; A["Unix"]="Linux"} {for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) if ($i in A) $i=A[$i]} {print}' file.txt

Last edited by MadeInGermany; 08-07-2015 at 01:04 PM..
# 6  
Old 08-07-2015
Code:
perl -pe 'BEGIN{%os = qw(Unix Linux Linux Unix unix linux linux unix)} s/([Ll]inux|[Uu]nix)/$os{$1}/g'  file

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