On Wed, Mar 04, 2009 at 04:24:27PM -0500, kamaraju kusumanchi wrote: > Consider the following file. > > > cat junk.txt > a(i)1b > a(j)1b > a(ij)1b > a(ji)1b > a(ijk)1b > a(jik)1b > a(ikj)1b > a(jki)1b > a(kij)1b > a(kji)1b > > In general the file is very long, might contain some other text. Now, > I would like to replace all the occurrences of > > a(ijk)1b with a(ijk)23b > a(jik)1b with a(jik)23b > a(ikj)1b with a(ikj)23b > and so on for all the strings such as a(???) > > Because of the size of the files involved, the number of files on > which I have to perform this operation I decided to use sed (instead > of doing it manually in vim) > > However my sed script currently involves 6 lines (for all the > combinations of ijk) such as > > s/a(ijk)1b/a(ijk)23b/g > s/a(jik)1b/a(jik)23b/g > s/a(ikj)1b/a(ikj)23b/g > and so on > > This method is very cumbersome, not scalable. If I have to do similar > operations on a(ijklm) the script would be 120 lines! Is there any way > to write something like > > s/a(???)1b/a(???)23b/g > > where the second ??? is the string matched by the first regular > expression. > > In general, how can I obtain the string that is matched by a regular > expression (in a shell script)? > > BTW, Is sed the right tool for this kind of job? If not, can you > suggest any other tool that will get the job done in less time?
Perhaps you could write a script/program to permutate the letters of the command line argument and then do: for jim in `permutate`;do sed -i "s/a$jim1b/a$jim23b/";done I've no idea if this would work. I'd certainly skip the -i option to start with ;) > > PS: Please include my email in the CC. > > thanks > raju > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org > -- "Running Debian/GNU Linux and loving every minute of it." -L. von Sacher-M. (1835-1895) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
