Replacing text

[chrchcol]

I have an index.html file that I need to be able to modify depending on if its secure or unsecure, can I use cat and or grep in a script to modify text in it?

Chris

[shanenin]

cat piped to grep can check to see if a line of text contains a string. the sed command is more suited for editing files. Sed is a good utility to modify text. Sed is good at deleting strings and also substituing one string for an other.

[chrchcol]

Can it be automated? into a script

Anyway you can give an example of the syntax

[shanenin]

for this example I will take the file an an input and make a new file as its output

sed -i "s/string/new_string/g"

this code will substitute all instances of 'string' with 'new_string'

if you want to delete all instances of string you would just substiture it with nothing

sed -i "s/string//g"

it would be very easy to automate it into a script

[chrchcol]

tried it and I can't quite get it right

Lets say I created a file called "hello" With the words username and password in it.

I wanted to change username to user

would I use

sed hello -i "s/username/user/g" ???????

[chrchcol]

ahh now I see correct syntax is

sed -i "s/text/changedtext/g" filename

Thank you for all your help

Chris

[shanenin]

if hello is the name of the file put it at the end. using the -i option changes your original file. You would want to keep your original unchanged, so it can be used as a template.

this would change the original

sed -i "s/username/user/g" hello

a better way would be to make a new file

sed "s/username/user/g" hello > newhello

or this line does the same thing

cat hello | sed "s/username/user/g" > newhello

[shanenin]

the g means global. if you do not use the g, only the first instance of the sting is changed. In you case, you would not need the g

sed "s/text/sub_text/"

[chrchcol]

Is there a way to make this exression work

pwd | sed -e "s/home/httpd/vusers/*.domain.com/web_users/chris2 /chris.domain.com/web_users/chris2/g"

Chris

[shanenin]

Since the forward slash has special meaning, you need to escape it. By placing a backslash in front of the forward slash, all of the special meaning is removed(escaped). for example my home directory is /home/shane. I will do an example that works

shane@mainbox ~ $ pwd | sed "s/\/home\/shane/\/new\/directory/"
/new/directory

[chrchcol]

pwd | sed "s/\/home/\/httpd/\/vusers/\/*.fileburst.com/\/web_users/\/chris2/\/chris.fileburst.com/\/web_users/\/chris2"
This is what I tried and it did not work, can you show me the flaw?

[shanenin]

If you use code tags your post would be a little easier to read. Try this

pwd | sed "s/\/home\/httpd\/vusers\/*.domain.com\/web_users\/chris2/\/chris.domain.com\/web_users\/chris2/g"

I am not sure, but the "*" might not wotrk with sed. let me know if this works

[chrchcol]

That one did not error out at all. However the output from it was

/root

Chris