CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexsed
SmiffyKmc
SmiffyKmc

Reputation: 891

Dynamically match and replace using Bash

I'm using bash to dynamically find and replace a string with another string e.g.

href="/controller/action"

href="<?php echo $this->url("controller", action-> "action") ?>"

I'm using this sed command to find and change it which works fine...

sed -i 's%href=\"/controller/action%href=\"<?php echo $this->url(\"controller\", action-> \"action\") ?>%g' changes.txt

What I want is for the old string to look for any type following a pattern using a wildcard. I saw that this is an option but doesn't work.

sed -i 's%href=\"/(.*)/(.*)%href=\"<?php echo $this->url(\"/1\", action-> \"/2\") ?>%g' changes.txt

How will I be able to run this command so that the controller and action can be anything and dynamically taken from the old string and inputted into the new string?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 94

Answers (1)

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 626870

You are using a greedy dot matching pattern the is almost never what you need since a dot matches any symbol and * quantifier grabs as many chars as it can. What you need is a negated bracket expression [^/]* matching zero or more chars other than /.

Also, since you are using a BRE POSIX regex you must escape the parentheses capturing a part of the pattern, else they denote literal ( and ) symbols.

Use

sed -i 's%href="/\([^/]*\)/\([^/]*\)%href="<?php echo $this->url("\1", action-> "\2") ?>%g' changes.txt

Upvotes: 2

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