Sed – find and replace text containing “/”

sed

How can I search and replace text that contains / with sed?

I currently use the following command which doesn't work

sed -i "s/queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix-secondary/queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix-$newnumber/g" /etc/postfix-$newnumber/main.cf

Best Answer

One approach is to pick a different delimiter besides /. For example, using |:

sed -ie "s|queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix-secondary|queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix-$newnumber|g" /etc/postfix-$newnumber/main.cf

Another approach is to backslash-escape your other slashes:

sed -ie "s/queue_directory = \/var\/spool\/postfix-secondary/queue_directory = \/var\/spool\/postfix-$newnumber/g" /etc/postfix-$newnumber/main.cf

Two more suggestions for your particular usage. First, I don't think you need the g flag, unless you anticipate the substitution appearing multiple times in the same line. Second, if you are just trying to change a directive, you could potentially just change it no matter what the previous value. For example:

sed -ie "s|^queue_directory =.*|queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix-$newnumber|" /etc/postfix-$newnumber/main.cf

Related Solutions

Use sed to find whole word and replace

Is this what you want?

$ sed 's/\(^\| \)test3\( \|$\)/\1/g' file
test3.legacy test4.legacy test3.kami

This say

substitute
   (^ start of line OR space)
   test3
   (space OR end of line)
with match 1 (AKA space or start of line)

Update:

And as so elegantly put by the good @Stephane Chazelas this would not take care of certain cases. Also emphasize on the portability part. See answer below.

A GNU variant could, (hopefully), be:

sed 's/\(^\| \)\(test3\( \|$\)\)*/\1/g'
# Or perhaps:
sed 's/\(^\| \)\(test3\( \|$\)\)\+/\1/g'

taking care of repetitive matches. Optionally one would take care of multiple spaces etc as well. Depending on input.

EOUPD

As an alternative perhaps (only meant as a starting point):

sed 's/\Wtest3\W/ /g'

Not this I assume:

$ sed 's/test3\.\?[^ ]* *//g' file
test4.legacy

Text Processing Sed – How to Find & Replace Pattern Within Specific Pattern Using Sed

With GNU sed:

sed -i -e '/<Directory "\/var\/www\/html">/,/<\/Directory>/{s/AllowOverride None/AllowOverride All/}' filename

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Use sed to find whole word and replace

Text Processing Sed – How to Find & Replace Pattern Within Specific Pattern Using Sed

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