SED Replacing all but one regex match on a line or specific matches

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I'm attempting to rename some files that have spaces in them. Without linking sed commands together is it possible to replace the first three "." to " ".

File.name.is.long.ext -> File name is long.ext

I can get the desired effect with

echo "File.name.is.long.ext" | sed 's/\./ /g;s/ /\./4'

Is it possible to do the same thing with just one command?

The following type of logic doesn't work

echo "File.name.is.long.ext" | sed 's/\./ /1~3'
2 
echo "File.name.is.long.kdk.dkkd.ext" | sed 's/\./ /g;s/\(.*\) /\1\./'
3

or

echo "file.name.is.long.ext" | sed -e 's/\(.*\)\.\(.*\)/\1 \2/;'

or

echo "file.name.is.long.ext" | perl -wlpe 's/(.*)\.(.*)/$1 $2/;'
4 
 echo "File.name.is.long.ext"  |sed ':a;s/\(.*\)\.\(.*\)\(\..*\)/\1\2\3/;ta'
Filenameislong.ext
5

Thanks for the quick replies. What you gave was not quite the desired result, but you got me on the right track. I found the following term works, but man it's long :).

echo "file.name.is.long.ext" | sed 's/\(.*\)\.\(.*\)\.\(.*\)\.\(.*\)\.\(.*\)/\1 \2 \3 \4.\5/'

It's too bad that sed didn't have a match for say...change all matches except the 4th one. You can change the 4th match with

sed 's/asdf/fdsa/4'

but there doesn't appear to be a short form to do the opposite.

6 
echo "File.name.is.long.ext"  |sed ':a;s/\(.*\)\.\(.*\)\(\..*\)/\1 \2\3/;ta'               File name is long.ext

---------- Post updated at 04:01 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:52 PM ----------

or:

echo $(echo ${var%.*}|tr '.' ' ')'.'${var##*.}