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up vote 4 down vote favorite

I have a file xx that has the following contents:

@base_url = "http://dmstaffing-stage.herokuapp.com/"

I want to use sed to eliminate this line (replace with nothing). I have used this sed technique with several other line successfully, e.g.

sed -i 's/require "selenium-webdriver"//' xx

But my attempt for the @base_url line isn't working. I suspect either the " or the // in the http:// are messing it up but I can't seem to fix!

I have tried:

$ sed  's/@base_url = "http://dmstaffing-stage.herokuapp.com/"//' xx
sed: -e expression #1, char 23: unknown option to `s'

$ sed  's/@base_url = \"http://dmstaffing-stage.herokuapp.com/\"//' xx
sed: -e expression #1, char 24: unknown option to `s'

$ sed  's/@base_url = "http:\/\/dmstaffing-stage.herokuapp.com/"//' xx
sed: -e expression #1, char 58: unknown option to `s'

but none worked.

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4 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

As mentioned, use other separator or escape the slashes. Your last try misses escape of last slash.

And as pointed out by @StephaneChazelas, escape dot's as well.

And, including @terdon if sed is not needed; grep -Fxv, where -F is fixed string, not regex, would be an option. -x makes sure it matches whole lines. -v inverts.

A simple (very simple) benchmark with time -v seems to favor sed though. (GNU variants.)

sed 's/@base_url = "http:\/\/dmstaffing-stage\.herokuapp\.com\/"//' xx

To delete it completely (not leave blank line) use:

sed '/@base_url = "http:\/\/dmstaffing-stage\.herokuapp\.com\/"/d' xx
                                                                |
                                                                +--- Delete
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1  
Stricktly speaking, you'd need to escape dots as well. To remove the line completely, use grep -xF '@base_url = "http://dmstaffing-stage.herokuapp.com/"' – Stephane Chazelas May 15 at 19:46
1  
@StephaneChazelas I assume you meant grep -vxF? – terdon May 15 at 19:57
up vote 3 down vote

Try using another separator:

sed  's|@base_url = "http://dmstaffing-stage.herokuapp.com/"||' xx
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up vote 3 down vote

The slashes in the regex are messing up with sed's delimiters. But you can use different delimiters than the slash. For example:

sed  's#@base_url = "http://dmstaffing-stage.herokuapp.com/"##' xx
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up vote 2 down vote

You can escape the slashes, like sed -e 's/"@base_url = "http:\/\/dmstaffing-stage.herokuapp.com\/"/d'. This jungle of /\/\//\// is a symptom of what is called LTS (Leaning Toothpick Syndrome). The best way around this is to just use another delimiter, like ; in your case, or whatever other non-alphanumeric character tickles your fancy today (and isn't included in whatever mangling you have in mind, obviously).

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