I am trying to replace a string using the following command:
sed -e "s/\<$5\>/$6/g" "$2/$1" > "$4/$3" $5-> "hostname=*" $6-> "hostname=int1" $2/$1-> "source file path" $4/$3-> "destination file path" When I try to replace the following:
hostname=abc I get,
hostname=int1=abc But I want,
hostname=int1 How can I match string to achieve this?
sed uses regular expressions. These are different from patterns ("globs") that the shell uses.
Notice that the following doesn't work:
$ echo hostname=abc | sed "s/\<hostname=*\>/hostname=int1/" hostname=int1=abc But, the following does:
$ echo hostname=abc | sed "s/\<hostname=.*\>/hostname=int1/" hostname=int1 You need a . before the *.
As a regular expression, hostname=* means hostname followed by zero or more equal signs. Thus sed "s/\<hostname=*\>/hostname=int1/" replaces hostname with hostname=int1.
By contrast, the regular expression hostname=.* means hostname= followed by zero or more any character at all. That is why s/\<hostname=.*\>/hostname=int1/ replaces hostname=abc with hostname=int1.
There might be a better solution than this but you can use the below command.
sed /hostname.*$/s//"hostname=int1"/g /home/path/of/your/original/file > /tmp/hello.$$
cat /tmp/hello.$$ > /home/path/of/your/original/file
