Shell Programming and Scripting

# function to create regexps with really big repeat-counts
# call: pRealManyOcc <int number> <string regex> -> success

function pRealManyOcc
{
typeset -i iNum=$1
typeset    chRegex="$2"
typeset    chResult=""

if [ $iNum -le 255 ] ; then
     return 1                    # what's the point, anyway
fi

chRegex="${chRegex//\\/\\\\}"    # to escape where no escaping has gone before

while [ $iNum -gt 255 ] ; do
     chResult="${chResult}${chRegex}\\\\{255\\\\}"
     (( iNum -= 255 ))
done

print - "${chResult}${chRegex}\\\\{${iNum}\\\\}"

return 0
}

sed -e 's/\(.\)/\1 TAGMARK-1/'"$pos" -e 's/ TAGMARK-1./,/' file