Inserting into middle of a string using sed

sedtext processing

I'm trying to insert a string into multiple lines using sed, but i don't get the desired result

I have this:

<p begin="540960420t" end="600189590t" xml:id="subtitle8">-Some text.<br/>-Some more text</p>
<p begin="601020420t" end="653572920t" xml:id="subtitle9">-Something else<br/>Some more text</p>
<p begin="654403750t" end="731560830t" xml:id="subtitle10">More words<br/>-more text</p>
<p begin="732401670t" end="786625840t" xml:id="subtitle11">Some text.<br/>Some more text</p>

and I need to insert this

<span style="style0">

Before the "subtitle[0-200]"> so it will be like this:

<p begin="540960420t" end="600189590t" xml:id="subtitle8"><span style="style0">-Some text.<br/>-Some more text</p>
<p begin="601020420t" end="653572920t" xml:id="subtitle9"><span style="style0">-Some text.<br/>Some more text</p>

etc…

I was trying something like this:

cat demo.xml | sed 's/xml:id="subtitle[0-9]">/<span style="style0"><p/g'

But this replaces the xml:id="subtitle[0-9]"> and only from subtitle0 to subtile9

I am quite new to all this sed and regexp thing, if something else should be easier than sed then it's fine ..

Best Regards
Soren

Best Answer

You can do:

sed 's/subtitle[0-9]\{1,3\}">/&<span style="style0">/'

This matches the subtitle[0-200] by matching 1 to 3 digits using the \{1,3\} and replaces this with the matched pattern with the <span style... added.

If you input:

<p begin="540960420t" end="600189590t" xml:id="subtitle8">-Some text.<br/>-Some more text</p>

<p begin="601020420t" end="653572920t" xml:id="subtitle9">-Something else<br/>Some more text</p>

<p begin="654403750t" end="731560830t" xml:id="subtitle10">More words<br/>-more text</p>

<p begin="732401670t" end="786625840t" xml:id="subtitle11">Some text.<br/>Some more text</p>

This will output

<p begin="540960420t" end="600189590t" xml:id="subtitle8"><span style="style0">-Some text.<br/>-Some more text</p>

<p begin="601020420t" end="653572920t" xml:id="subtitle9"><span style="style0">-Something else<br/>Some more text</p>

<p begin="654403750t" end="731560830t" xml:id="subtitle10"><span style="style0">More words<br/>-more text</p>

<p begin="732401670t" end="786625840t" xml:id="subtitle11"><span style="style0">Some text.<br/>Some more text</p>

Related Solutions

Lum – How to sed output be formatted like printf’s formatted printing

This uses the extended regex syntax -r, which clears up a lot of the clutter. Also, because you already know some of the field values, you don't actually need to back-reference them, again reducing clutter (and overhead).

& is a special replacement value: it hold the entire matched pattern. Using the &, again reduces clutter. As it is not a back-reference, it has significantly less overhead.

I've used ( +) vs. ( *). The + assumes that there is at least one space between input fields. Just change it to the * it that is not the case.

EXPL=
dom=oracle
typ=hard
itm=nproc
val=666

echo "oracle   hard   nproc    131072" |
  sed -r "s/^$dom( +)$typ( +)$itm( +).*/$EXPL#&\n$dom\1$typ\2$itm\3$val/"

output

#oracle   hard   nproc    131072
oracle   hard   nproc    666

sed on OSX – How to Insert at a Certain Line

Strictly speaking, the POSIX specification for sed requires a newline after a\:

[1addr]a\
text
Write text to standard output as described previously.

This makes writing one-liners a bit of a pain, which is probably the reason for the following GNU extension to the a, i, and c commands:

As a GNU extension, if between the a and the newline there is other than a whitespace-\ sequence, then the text of this line, starting at the first non-whitespace character after the a, is taken as the first line of the text block. (This enables a simplification in scripting a one-line add.) This extension also works with the i and c commands.

Thus, to be portable with your sed syntax, you will need to include a newline after the a\ somehow. The easiest way is to just insert a quoted newline:

$ sed -e 'a\
> text'

(where $ and > are shell prompts). If you find that a pain, bash [1] has the $' ' quoting syntax for inserting C-style escapes, so just use

sed -e 'a\'$'\n''text'

[1] and mksh (r39b+) and some non-bash bourne shells (e.g., /bin/sh in FreeBSD 9+)

Best Answer

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Lum – How to sed output be formatted like printf’s formatted printing

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