Replace whole line containing a string using Sed

Question

I have a text file which has a particular line something like  sometext sometext sometext TEXT TO BE REPLACED sometext sometext sometext   I need to replace the whole line above with   This line is removed by the admin    The search keyword is TEXT TO BE REPLACED   I need to write a shell script for this  How can I achieve this using sed

User · Answer

for manipulation of config files  i came up with this solution inspired by skensell answer  configLine  searchPattern   replaceLine   filePath   it will    create the file if not exists replace the whole line  all lines  where searchPattern matched add replaceLine on the end of the file if pattern was not found   Function   function configLine     local OLD LINE PATTERN  1  shift   local NEW LINE  1  shift   local FILE  1   local NEW   echo    NEW LINE     sed  s         g     touch    FILE     sed -i       OLD LINE PATTERN     s        NEW     h    x     x q100  x      FILE     if       -ne 100     amp  amp       NEW LINE             then     echo    NEW LINE    gt  gt     FILE     fi     the crazy exit status magic comes from https   stackoverflow com a 12145797 1262663

User · Answer

The accepted answer did not work for me for several reasons     my version of sed does not like -i with a zero length extension the syntax of the c  command is weird and I couldn t get it to work I didn t realize some of my issues are coming from unescaped slashes   So here is the solution I came up with which I think should work for most cases   function escape slashes       sed  s         g      function change line       local OLD LINE PATTERN  1  shift     local NEW LINE  1  shift     local FILE  1      local NEW   echo    NEW LINE     escape slashes      sed -i  bak       OLD LINE PATTERN    s        NEW         FILE       mv    FILE  bak   tmp      So the sample usage to fix the problem posed   change line  TEXT TO BE REPLACED   This line is removed by the admin   yourFile

User · Answer

cat find replace   while read pattern replacement   do sed -i     pattern  c   replacement   file     done    find replace file contains 2 columns  c1 with pattern to match  c2 with replacement  the sed loop replaces each line conatining one of the pattern of variable 1

User · Answer

You can use the change command to replace the entire line  and the -i flag to make the changes in-place  For example  using GNU sed   sed -i   TEXT TO BE REPLACED c This line is removed by the admin    tmp foo

User · Answer

To do this without relying on any GNUisms such as -i without a parameter or c without a linebreak  sed   TEXT TO BE REPLACED c  This line is removed by the admin    infile  gt  tmpfile  amp  amp  mv tmpfile infile  In this  POSIX compliant  form of the command c  text  text can consist of one or multiple lines  and linebreaks that should become part of the replacement have to be escaped  c  line1  line2 s x y   where s x y  is a new sed command after the pattern space has been replaced by the two lines line1 line2

User · Answer

You need to use wildards      before and after to replace the whole line   sed  s   TEXT TO BE REPLACED   This line is removed by the admin

User · Answer

It is as similar to above one    sed  s  A-Za-z0-9  TEXT TO BE REPLACED  A-Za-z0-9   This line is removed by the admin

User · Answer

In my makefile I use this   sed -i     Revision    c   quot  svn info -R main cpp   awk    Rev    quot    README md  PS  DO NOT forget that the -i changes actually the text in the file    so if the pattern you defined as  quot Revision quot  will change  you will also change the pattern to replace  Example output   Abc-Project written by John Doe Revision  1190  So if you set the pattern  quot Revision  1190 quot  it s obviously not the same as you defined them as  quot Revision  quot  only

User · Answer

All of the answers provided so far assume that you know something about the text to be replaced which makes sense  since that s what the OP asked  I m providing an answer that assumes you know nothing about the text to be replaced and that there may be a separate line in the file with the same or similar content that you do not want to be replaced  Furthermore  I m assuming you know the line number of the line to be replaced   The following examples demonstrate the removing or changing of text by specific line numbers     replace line 17 with some replacement text and make changes in file  -i switch    the  -i  switch indicates that we want to change the file  Leave it out if you d     just like to see the potential changes output to the terminal window     17s  indicates that we re searching line 17        indicates that we want to change the text of the entire line    REPLACEMENT-TEXT  is the new text to put on that line    PATH-TO-FILE  tells us what file to operate on sed -i  17s    REPLACEMENT-TEXT   PATH-TO-FILE    replace specific text on line 3 sed -i  3s TEXT-TO-REPLACE REPLACEMENT-TEXT

User · Answer

The Answer above   sed -i   TEXT TO BE REPLACED c This line is removed by the admin    tmp foo   Works fine if the replacement string line is not a variable    The issue is that on Redhat 5 the   after the c escapes the    A double    did not work either  at least on Redhat 5    Through hit and trial  I discovered that the   after the c is redundant if your replacement string line is only a single line  So I did not use   after the c  used a variable as a single replacement line and it was joy   The code would look something like   sed -i   TEXT TO BE REPLACED c  REPLACEMENT TEXT STRING   tmp foo   Note the use of double quotes instead of single quotes

User · Answer

To replace whole line containing a specified string with the content of that line Text file  Row  0 last time contacted 0  display name Mozart   id 100  phonebook bucket alt 2 Row  1 last time contacted 0  display name Bach   id 101  phonebook bucket alt 2  Single string    sed  s    display name      alpha           1   output  100 101  Multiple strings delimited by white-space    sed  s    display name      alpha           id      digit           1  2   output  Mozart 100 Bach 101  Adjust regex to meet your needs   alpha  and   digit   are Character Classes and Bracket Expressions

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bash-4 1  new db host  DB HOSTNAME good replaced with 122 334 567 90  bash-4 1   bash-4 1  sed -i   DB HOST c  new db host  test4sed vim test4sed       DB HOSTNAME good replaced with 122 334 567 90     it works fine

User · Answer

I very often use regex to extract data from files I just used that to replace the  literal quote    with    nothing  -    cat file csv   egrep       0-9  1 3    0-9  1 3        sed  s     g    cut -d  -f1  gt  list txt

User · Answer

Below command is working for me  Which is working with variables   sed -i     lt  E  gt  c  D    B

[string] Replace whole line containing a string using Sed

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