CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexsedsaspipesolaris
user667489
user667489

Reputation: 9569

sed substitution works in terminal but not in SAS pipe

If I run the command echo abc | sed 's/b/\'$'\n'/ at a terminal, I get the output:

a
c

But if run the following SAS code on on the same server, reading the output of exactly the same command,

filename cmd pipe "echo abc | sed 's/b/\'$'\n'/";
data _null_;
  infile cmd;
  input;
  put _infile_;
run;

I get this in the log instead:

a$nc

How can I make the SAS pipe output match what I get in the terminal?

Further details

I'm using SAS 9.1.3 on Solaris 10 / SunOS 5.1. The Solaris version of sed I'm using does not support \n escape sequences for newlines in regexes, hence the shell substitution in the command above. If I run 

echo abc | sed s/b/\n/

I get the following output (in a terminal):

anc

I do not have the option of using any other version of sed.

I already have a tr-based solution, but I would like to find a way of making this work in sed if possible, so that I can replace longer strings with newlines.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 219

Answers (1)

Jason Hu
Jason Hu

Reputation: 6333

i don't know about SAS, but the problem could be quite universal in various languages, which is: languages fork commands without a shell, therefore your pipe is not recognized. you need to change your code into bash -c "echo abc | sed 's/b/\'$'\n'/". you need to deal with quotes, of course.

Upvotes: 4

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