How do I add a line to a specific stanza in a config file?

Question

My configuration file, server.conf, has the following format:

[general]
setting1=sdfdsf
setting2=asdfadsf

[ssl]
setting1=sadfsdf
setting2=sdfadsfkljasdf

How do I add an additional setting to the [general] stanza using a Bash script?

Answer 1

You could do it with sed

$ sed 's/^\[general\]/\[general\]\nnew=setting/' file 

which adds new=setting after the [general]. using sed -i.bak ... file will do it in place and create a file.bak for safety.

Answer 2

Can you try as given below

cat server.conf
[general]
setting1=sdfdsf
setting2=asdfadsf

[ssl]
setting1=sadfsdf
setting2=sdfadsfkljasdf

sed  '/general/,/^$/s/^$/setting3=new_entry\n/g' server.conf

cat server.conf
[general]
setting1=sdfdsf
setting2=asdfadsf
setting3=new_entry

[ssl]
setting1=sadfsdf
setting2=sdfadsfkljasdf

Answer 3

This seems to be mostly answered over on stackoverflow:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6284518/how-to-insert-a-line-using-sed-before-a-pattern-and-after-a-line-number

Basically its a job for SED or AWK and a little regex.