sed substitution variable containing "/"

Question

I've got a file containing information: eg:

Hello
START
{
toto=1
tata=2
}
STOP

I need to substitute what is between START and STOP by the content of a bash variable.

This works well using sed \c but my variable contains the \ character that needs to be kept, and it's not the case.

my sed:

MY_VAR="it is 07\:00\:00"; sed -i "/START/,/STOP/c ${MY_VAR}" file

result:

Hello
it is 07:00:00

expected:

Hello
it is 07\:00\:00

Thanks

`sed` itself has no concept of variables or accepting parameters. This is just an example of creating a `sed` script using *shell* parameter expansion. The script contains a literal `\:`, which `sed` itself resolves to `:`. — chepner, Dec 07 '22 at 14:14

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 07 '22 at 13:50

2

I suggest to replace first all \ with \\\:

MY_VAR="it is 07\:00\:00"
MY_VAR="${MY_VAR//\\/\\\\}"
sed "/START/,/STOP/c ${MY_VAR}" file

Output:

Hello
it is 07\:00\:00

answered Dec 07 '22 at 13:50

Cyrus

thanks a lot, it's exactly what I was looking for, I could'nt find the right number of \ to use :( – Totoc1001 Dec 07 '22 at 13:58

1 Answers1