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up vote 1 down vote favorite

I am trying to replace a string using the following command:

sed -e "s/\<$5\>/$6/g" "$2/$1" > "$4/$3"

$5-> "hostname=*"
$6-> "hostname=int1"
$2/$1-> "source file path"
$4/$3-> "destination file path"

When I try to replace the following:

hostname=abc

I get,

hostname=int1=abc

But I want,

hostname=int1

How can I match string to achieve this?

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1  
Please provide part of the source file you want to manage –  Romeo Ninov May 7 at 7:12
    
This looks suspiciously like XML source. Is it? –  Sobrique May 7 at 11:10
    
Yes, this is part of the same script but not related to my question. –  Menon May 7 at 11:20

2 Answers 2

up vote 3 down vote accepted

sed uses regular expressions. These are different from patterns ("globs") that the shell uses.

Notice that the following doesn't work:

$ echo hostname=abc | sed "s/\<hostname=*\>/hostname=int1/"
hostname=int1=abc

But, the following does:

$ echo hostname=abc | sed "s/\<hostname=.*\>/hostname=int1/"
hostname=int1

You need a . before the *.

As a regular expression, hostname=* means hostname followed by zero or more equal signs. Thus sed "s/\<hostname=*\>/hostname=int1/" replaces hostname with hostname=int1.

By contrast, the regular expression hostname=.* means hostname= followed by zero or more any character at all. That is why s/\<hostname=.*\>/hostname=int1/ replaces hostname=abc with hostname=int1.

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Perfect!!! Thanks a lot!!! –  Menon May 7 at 8:23
up vote 1 down vote

There might be a better solution than this but you can use the below command.

sed /hostname.*$/s//"hostname=int1"/g /home/path/of/your/original/file > /tmp/hello.$$

cat /tmp/hello.$$ > /home/path/of/your/original/file

Hope it helps.

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