I have the code like this:
sed "s/TEST_CASES_R/$testCaseLocations/g" template >> newfile where $testCaseLocations has ,tests/test/,tests/test/2. So this line is failing like:
bad flag in substitute command
How can I solve this?
- possible duplicate of sed: delete using a different delimiterNeronLeVelu– NeronLeVelu2015-01-27 14:08:12 +00:00Commented Jan 27, 2015 at 14:08
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2 Answers
Ah, sed code injection. What sed sees is
sed "s/TEST_CASES_R/,tests/test/,tests/test/2/g" template >> newfile ...which is nonsensical. The root problem is that sed cannot differentiate between the things you want it to see as data -- the contents of $testCaseLocations -- and instructions.
The best solution in my opinion is to use awk:
awk -v replacement="$testCaseLocations" '{ gsub(/TEST_CASES_R/, replacement); print }' template >> newfile because this neatly sidesteps code injection problems by not treating testCaseLocations as code. You could, in this particular case, also use a different delimiter for sed, such as
sed "s@TEST_CASES_R@$testCaseLocations@g" template >> newfile but then you'd run into trouble if $testCaseLocations contains a @, or if it contains a character that has meaning for sed in the context where it appears, such as \ or &.
2 Comments
batman
Thanks for awk solution. Neat one.
Just use another separator for sed, otherwise it sees so many slashes around: sed 's#hello#bye#g' is fine.
In your case:
sed "s#TEST_CASES_R#$testCaseLocations#g" template >> newfile See another test:
$ var="/hello" $ echo "test" | sed "s/test/$var/g" sed: -e expression #1, char 9: unknown option to `s' $ echo "test" | sed "s#test#$var#g" /hello