Replacing dynamically changing regular expressions using sed

Question

,"some values1","some values2",Not Processed,0,

Is there any way I could replace the above pattern, irrespective of whatever values come in some values1 or some values2 with the lines below,

,,,Not Processed,0,

This string is just a part of a large file I have.

please try to be more clear .. what you want to replace and with what .... we will definatly try to help you — Puneet Sinha, Jan 18 '19 at 07:01
@PuneetSinha I want to replace with empty values as I mentioned in the desired O/P, — vijith, Jan 18 '19 at 07:07
How about Perl? `perl -i.bak -wple 's!^,"[^"]+","[^]",!,"","",!' file.csv` — Corion, Jan 18 '19 at 07:20
@Corion could you please tell me how to do that in sed, also the lines I mentioned in the question are a part of a larger string, in one line the first value might be in 5th position and in the next line it may vary . Only the pattern which I mentioned in the question remains unchanged. — vijith, Jan 18 '19 at 07:25
... sorry (too late to edit) `How about Perl? `perl -i.bak -wple 's!^,"[^"]+","[^"]",!,"","",!' file.csv`` — Corion, Jan 18 '19 at 07:25
Then please [edit] your question and write there what the constant pattern is and what the variable pattern is. From what you've shown, it is completely unclear where the pattern starts and ends. — Corion, Jan 18 '19 at 07:26
Maybe try `perl -i.bak -wple 's!,"[^"]*","[^"]*",Not Processed,0!,"","",Not Processed,0,!'` — Corion, Jan 18 '19 at 07:27
Possible duplicate of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20425763/replace-in-a-csv-file-value-of-a-column — tripleee, Jan 18 '19 at 08:24

Alex Harvey · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-18T08:13:41.553

0

This solves the problem I believe:

test_data() {
  cat <<EOF
  ,"val1,val2...","val1,val2,val3..",Not Processed,0,
  ,"val1,val2..","",Not Processed,0,
  ,"","val1,val2,val3....",Not Processed,0,
EOF
}

test_data | sed -e 's/\(.*\),"[^"]*","[^"]*",\(Not Processed,0,\)\(.*\)/\1,,,\2\3/g'

Output:

▶ bash data.sh
  ,,,Not Processed,0,
  ,,,Not Processed,0,
  ,,,Not Processed,0,

edited Jan 18 '19 at 08:13

answered Jan 18 '19 at 07:34

Alex Harvey

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This is highly speculative. With the samples the OP supplied, simply replacing every string with `,"","",Not Processed,0,` would fulfill their requirements. – tripleee Jan 18 '19 at 08:02
Yes I see your point. I’ll wait until the question is clarified. – Alex Harvey Jan 18 '19 at 08:19
@AlexHarvey I have edited the question,Could you please check that – vijith Jan 18 '19 at 08:22
If your question is correct now, then this answer is correct, too. Does it not work for you? – tripleee Jan 18 '19 at 08:23
1

It works now, thanks – vijith Jan 18 '19 at 13:01

Replacing dynamically changing regular expressions using sed

1 Answers1