Help substituting text in a file having a single line but no newline char

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello,

Need help substituting a particular word in a file having a single line but no newline character at the end.

I was trying to use sed but it doesn't work probably because there is no newline char at the end of the line.

$ cat hlq_detail
/outputs/alvan23/PDFs/bills

$ cat hlq_detail | sed 's/alvan23/alvan4/g'

The file hlq_detail does not have a newline char after "bills"

2

Try it with awk:

awk 'sub("alvan23","alvan4")' file
1 Like
3

Hi.

Out of interest, which OS are you using?

If it's Solaris, try using /usr/xpg4/bin/sed".

4

Thanks Franklin,

It does work. But, doesn't AWK work in a similar way as SED i.e. it does refer the newline character to check for the end of the line?

---------- Post updated at 03:53 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:52 PM ----------

I am using HP Unix

5

OK, thanks :slight_smile:

6 
exec 6<"myfile"
while read -r LINE<&6
do
  LINE="${LINE/alvan23/alvan4}"
  echo "$LINE"
done > tmp
exec 6<&-
mv tmp myfile