UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Trying to write a sed replacement but the command is taking some characters as literal. Here is what I have:

Code:

Text 100 101

. This is desired output:

Code:

['Text' 100,101]

. This is what I have so far:

Code:

sed 's/^[A-Z]/[&/g;s/[a-z] /&] /g'

. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hello jimmyf,

Not sed but if you are interested in an awk solution, then following may help you.

Code:

awk -vs1="'" -vs2="[" -vs3="]" '{for(i=2;i<=NF;i++){A=A?A OFS $i:$i};print s2 s1 $1 s1 " " A s3;A=""}' OFS=,  Input_file

Output will be as follows.

Code:

['Text' 100,101]

On a Solaris/SunOS system, change awk to /usr/xpg4/bin/awk , /usr/xpg6/bin/awk , or nawk.

Thanks,
R. Singh

Code:

sed "s/^\\([^ ]*\\) \\([^ ]*\\) \\([^ ]*\\)/\\['\\1'\\] \\2,\\3\\]/"

no go

---------- Post updated at 10:35 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:28 AM ----------

neither of these solutions work both are returning no change to the original string

Code:

sed "s/\(^[a-zA-Z].*\) \(.*\) \(.*$\)/\['\1' \2,\3\]/"

This should work.

Code:

sed  -r "s/^([[:alpha:]]*)/['\1'/; s/$/]/; s/([0-9]) ([0-9])/\1,\2/" file
['Text' 100,101]

Please be aware that as long as your spec is as vague as above, solutions can't be better than the ones provided...

You face the problem how to put a ' character within a 'string_in_ticks'
Either use the ' within "quotes" or escape it with '\''.
Then you have the problem of matching [a-z] and putting a ] character in between. For this you can enclose a part with \( \) and use a \1 reference (and a \2 reference for the next \( \)).
Last but not least, you don't need /g option (repeated substitution attempts per line).

Code:

sed "s/^[A-Z]/['&/; s/\([a-z]\) /\1'] /"

Code:

sed 's/^[A-Z]/['\''&/; s/\([a-z]\) /\1'\''] /'

Colors demonstrate that in the shell the 'string' is split into parts, and the escaped ' are outside the 'strings'.

Code:

sed 's/^[A-Z]/['\''&/; s/\([a-z]\) /\1'\''] /'

--
Just seeing you want the ] at the very end. Then have a third substitution.

Code:

sed 's/^[A-Z]/['\''&/; s/\([a-z]\) /\1'\'' /; s/$/]/'

The good thing with $ is that it does not match a real character so you do not need to put it back.