sed substitution

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi I am trying to do a text insertion in a text file at a particular line number in a shell script. However its not working.

sed '122i\
> for j in \`echo $MyList\` ; do perl -pi -e\'s#01\/01\/2009#01\/01\/2011#\' $j ; done' $HOME/MyScript.ksh

The Actual line to be inserted at line 122 is:

for j in `echo $My_List` ; do perl -pi -e's#01/01/2009#01/01/2011#' $j ; done

Why is it not doing so?
Please tell me how to do it.

2

You need an input file and output file for sed once you validate the output file you can overwrite the original file. The line you want to add contains single-quotes and even though you are escaping them you have to use double-quotes around the sed command. The last thing is you need to escape the '$' in front of the last 'j' if you want it to print literally in the file.

sed "122i for j in \`echo $MyList\` ; do perl -pi -e\'s#01\/01\/2009#01\/01\/2011#\' \$j ; done" $HOME/MyScript.ksh > output file
3

Its not working :frowning:

4

# cat of output file
118 This is a test file
119 This is a test file
120 This is a test file
121 This is a test file
122 for j in `echo ` ; do perl -pi -e's#01/01/2009#01/01/2011#' $j ; done
123 This is a test file
124 This is a test file
125 This is a test file
126 This is a test file
127 This is a test file

works for me using my inputFile

sed "122i for j in \`echo $MyList\` ; do perl -pi -e\'s#01\/01\/2009#01\/01\/2011#\' \$j ; done" inputFile > output
5

But where is $MyList on line 122?
I am using Solaris, is this command OS dependent?

6

escape the "$" in front of Mylist "\$Mylist" so it is not resolved as a variable.