Using sed to replace specific character and specific position

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I am trying to use sed to replace specific characters at a specific position in the file with a different value... can this be done?

Example:

File:
A0199999123
A0199999124
A0199999125

Need to replace 99999 in positions 3-7 with 88888.

Any help is appreciated.

2

Can you show us what you have tried so far?

Regards

3

I have tried several variations of sed with no luck.

sed 's/...99999/88888/'

This was close except it replaced the first 8 characters with only 5.

-----Post Update-----

Nevermind, I got it.

sed 's/^\(.\{3\}\)99999/\188888/'

Replaces 99999 starting at position 3 with 88888

4 
 sed  's/\(.\{3\}\)\([0-9]\{5\}\)\(.*\)/\188888\3/g' filename

-Devaraj Takhellambam

5

can sed do this beyond 255 chars ? for example, i want to replace at position 500.

6

Hi.

Sed will read a line of any length, but the command block { } has a 32K -1 limit (32767) (this may be implementation-specific)

# sed "s/\(.\{32767\}\)...../\1 XXXXxxxX/" file1 > file2
# echo $?
# 0
 
# sed "s/\(.\{32768\}\)...../\1 XXXXxxxX/" file1 > file2
sed: -e expression #1, char 34: Invalid content of \{\}