Replacing text using sed

Question

What am I doing wrong?

sed -i 's/** [out :: apple.mango@machine-6.mysite.com]/machine-6/g' file1.csv
Error -: sed: -e expression #1, char 58: Invalid range end

I basically want to replace apple.mango@machine-6.mysite.com with just machine-6 through bash?

Additionally, I want to do this for all machines (7 of them), so will I have to write this line individually for each, or can I use the same replace line for all of them?

Any help appreciated

Answer 1

Square brackets are special characters. When you mean them literally, you need to escape them, as well as dots:

\[out :: apple\.mango@machine-6\.mysite\.com\]

Also, if you mean the asterisks literally, it's better to escape them, as well.

And yes, you can write a loop to run through 7 machine numbers using seq:

for i in $(seq 7); do
    sed -i "s/\*\* \[out :: apple\.mango@machine-$i\.mysite\.com]/machine-$i/g" file1.csv
done

Note the double quotes I used here, as single quotes prevernt variable expansion.