I wish to substituite a string on each line but ONLY if it appears within double-quotes:
this_string="abc#def#geh" # Comment here
I wish to change the "#" characters within the double quoted string to "_":
this_string="abc_def_geh" # Comment here
... but as you see, the "comment" hash is retained.
The substitution cannot check positional placement, only whether it is within quotes.
Any ideas?
Cheers
I could not think of a straight forward approach. Assuming --- does not occur anywhere in the line.
sed -e "s/\(.*\)#\([^#]*\)/\1---\2/;s/#/_/g;s/---/#/" input.txt
I have changed the last '#' to '---', replaced the other '#' with '_', and reverted back '---' to '#'.
Does it have to be strictly sed ?
This awk solution seems to work just ok
echo 'this_string="abc#def#geh" # Comment here' | awk -F'"' '{ gsub("#","_",$2); print sprintf("%s\"%s\"%s",$1,$2,$3) }'