CODEWITHSUNDEEP
stringbashshellsed
Anonymous
Anonymous

Reputation: 456

Replace a multiline string with pattern using sed command

I would like to replace a string where the content is multiline. At each end of line, it can be a /n or \r\n, for the indentation, it can be tabulation or spaces, I don't know. I think the best way to find the string is to use pattern and replace it using sed. This is the content of the file :

<Element Blabla>        
        A content
        A second content
        A third content
</Element>
<Element TheSearchedElement>        
        A content
        A second content
        A third content
</Element>
<Element Blabla2>        
        A content
        A second content
        A third content
</Element>

I want to replace this block :

<Element TheSearchedElement>        
        A content
        A second content
        A third content
</Element>

By this block :

<Element TheSearchedElement>        
        A content
        A second replaced
        A third content
</Element>

I think I should create a variable oldPattern which contains the pattern to find and a variable newPattern which contains the new pattern to write. This is the content of my script :

$oldPattern='<Element TheSearchedElement>*A content*A second content*A third*content*</Element>'
$newPattern='<Element TheSearchedElement>/n/tA content/n/tA second replaced/n/tA third*content/n</Element>'
sed -e '/oldPattern/newPattern/' file.conf

The problem is I have an error at output : script.sh: 1: script.sh: =A contentA second contentA thirdcontent*: not found script.sh: 2: script.sh: =/n/tA content/n/tA second replaced/n/tA third*content/n: not found sed: -e expression n°1, char 14: useless chars after command

I hope you will can help me.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 180

Answers (2)

RavinderSingh13
RavinderSingh13

Reputation: 133770

Could you please try following and let me know if this helps you.

awk '/<Element TheSearchedElement>/{print;getline;print;getline;print "        A second replaced";next} 1'  Input_file

In case you want to save output into same Input_file itself then do following(if you are happy with above command's results):

awk '/<Element TheSearchedElement>/{print;getline;print;getline;print "        A second replaced";next} 1'  Input_file > temp_file && mv temp_file  Input_file

Upvotes: 1

William Pursell
William Pursell

Reputation: 212634

You don't need to do a multiline replacement, you just need to restrict your replacement to an address range: 

sed '/^<Element TheSearchedElement>$/,\@^</Element>@{/second/s/content/repl/; }' input

Upvotes: 0

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