SED sub commands in KSH not working for me

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I am using SED to edit a file (called file)
the file contains the word "ERROR"
and I want to use SED to:

  1. Search for text "ERROR"
    If found,
  2. Append new line with text "hoi"

I tried:

sed 's/ERROR/ a\hoi' file
sed 's/ERROR/ a\ hoi' file

I get all the time the error

sed: 0602-404 Function s/ERROR/ a\ hoi cannot be parsed.

what am I doing wrong??? :wall:

2 
sed "s/ERROR/\nhoi/" file

will it work?

3

not working

4

Same error? Because what You did try before could not work - You didn't close "s" command.
sed in ksh works pretty normal...

$ ksh
$ echo "1 2 3" | sed "s/2/\nhoi/"
1 
hoi 3
5

not working: output

$ echo "1 2 3" | sed "s/2/\nhoi/"
1 nhoi 3
6

Alex, are you in solaris ?

7

nope AIX

8

The original attempt does not use the append command correctly. You cannot embed it in the replacement portion of a substitute command.

In subsequent suggestions, the use of \n in the replacement text is a non-portable extension (most commonly found on gnu/linux systems).

To add 'hoi' on a line by itself after a line with the word "ERROR", the simplest way would be to use the append command:

sed '/ERROR/a\
hoi\
' file

You could also accomplish this task with the substitution command:

sed '/ERROR/s/$/\
hoi/' file

Too insert a newline immediately after the word "ERROR" and immediately after "hoi", you can use this substitution:

sed 's/ERROR/&\
hoi\
/' file

My suggestions should be portable. They use a backslash-escaped literal newline to insert a newline. \n won't always work.

Regards,
Alister