Hi there
I have a file which has the lines
# Serial number for hostid
EXP_SERIAL_=""
These lines could be anywhere in the file as far as line numbers go, I would like replace these two lines with
# Serial number for hostid $var1
EXP_SERIAL_$var1="$var2"
Is there a quick and simple way for me to do this ?
cheers
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use this
though not clean, should work
thats great but if i run that command from the command line it outputs the correct result to the screen but doesnt actually edit the file
How do i get it to make a permanent change to the file ??
sed "s/old text/new text/g" input.txt > temp
mv temp input.txt
or
perl -pi -e "s/old text/new text/g" input.txt
that works great thankyou ....I wanted to avoid creating a new file and mv'ing it back over again....but if i have to do that then so be it
thanks for your help
You might try something like this if you don't want to create a file:
echo '%s/oldtext/newtext/g\nwq' | ex file
This will edit the text within the file. Non interactive style vi. The exact syntax for ex is a bit murky I can't find a lot of docs on it, but in a few occasions it's well worth figuring out and using.