Need help using sed command in shell script?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello,
i want to take the input from user and according to that variable's value search in file emp.lst. Here is what i came up with

echo -e "Enter string to be searched :\c"
read str

sed -n '/\$str/p' emp.lst

this is not working! any idea why?Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:

2

You should be using "grep" instead of "sed" for this purpose. Anyway, this works for me:

$ cat emp.lst
john reed
peter sullivan
pete blake
rob turner
$ cat em.sh
#!/usr/bin/bash

echo -e "Enter string to be searched :\c"
read str

sed -n "/$str/p" emp.lst
$ em.sh
Enter string to be searched :pete
peter sullivan
pete blake
1 Like
3

rikxik thanks! :slight_smile:
yeah i should be using grep but my main intention was not to search the emp.lst my main intention of asking this question was how to use variable in sed

4

you can use a buffer tmp-file

echo "s/${str}/p/" > /tmp/buf_sed_file
sed -f /tmp/buf_sed_file <your text file>

bye

eg

5

You could have just asked that :slight_smile: