Sed Special Characters

Stythys · 2008-10-27 23:45:19

Can someone help me with a sed string?

Basically what I want to run is: sed -i 's/<?/<?php/g' *.php

but it has trouble with the '<' characters and I've tried googling but can't for the life of me figure out how to parse this correctly

Allan · 2008-10-27 23:49:56

My guess is that it is the ? character that is causing the problem. Haven't tested but "s#<\?#<\?php#" should get you close...

Stythys · 2008-10-27 23:54:45

well, it ran successfully...

put '<?php' at the beginning of every single line tho haha

Procyon · 2008-10-28 00:07:58

\? is a special regex character. It matches 0-1 instances.

Definitely use ?

It changed (only) the beginning of every line because it didn't have the g option.

Same goes for \<. It is used to match words. But just < should work.

So I don't see anything wrong with your initial command. What was the error message?

Allan · 2008-10-28 00:09:31

oops....

it appears my sed-foo is weak

Stythys · 2008-10-28 00:11:52

adding a 'g' onto the end replaces every single character with '<?php'

Stythys · 2008-10-28 01:37:04

anyone?

creslin · 2008-10-28 01:48:45

Stythys wrote:

adding a 'g' onto the end replaces every single character with '<?php'

Are you saying "every single character" literally? 'a' gets replaced with <?php, 'b' gets replaced with <?php, etc? Can you post an example of 1 file before and after? I just did some quick tests and sed -i 's/<?/<?php/g' *.php works fine for me to replace every occurrence of <? with <?php in a directory's .php files.

Stythys · 2008-10-28 01:57:09

when I run the command you listed I get output like this

Last edited by Stythys (2008-10-28 01:59:40)

Stythys · 2008-10-28 02:03:09

wait...sorry creslin, I was running your command on my files after I already screwed them up, forgot to revert

and yeah your command worked, thanks. I'm almost certain that's what I was originally running....ah well

creslin · 2008-10-28 02:07:34

yeah... the sed in your original looked fine.. /shrug

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-27 23:45:19

Sed Special Characters

#2 2008-10-27 23:49:56

Re: Sed Special Characters

#3 2008-10-27 23:54:45

Re: Sed Special Characters

#4 2008-10-28 00:07:58

Re: Sed Special Characters

#5 2008-10-28 00:09:31

Re: Sed Special Characters

#6 2008-10-28 00:11:52

Re: Sed Special Characters

#7 2008-10-28 01:37:04

Re: Sed Special Characters

#8 2008-10-28 01:48:45

Re: Sed Special Characters

#9 2008-10-28 01:57:09

Re: Sed Special Characters

#10 2008-10-28 02:03:09

Re: Sed Special Characters

#11 2008-10-28 02:07:34

Re: Sed Special Characters

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