Hello, On Sun, Jan 02, 2022 at 05:52:36PM -0500, Paul M. Foster wrote: > In a script, I'd like to search for a pattern in a file, and replace that > line entirely with a new line, once (not globally). I've tried > > sed -i s/search/new_line/ > > but this only replaces the string itself. I want the script to find the line > my search term is on, and replace the whole line with my replacement line.
Match the whole line, not just the string. sed -i 's/^.*search.*$/new line/' filename The ^ and $ anchor at start and end respectively and the .* matches everything. You can instead use sed's 'c' modifier to tell it to replace the whole line: sed -i '/search/new line/c' filename but I personally prefer to give exact matches. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
