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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-04T07:24:42+00:00

I am working on a script that among other things will delete a line

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I am working on a script that among other things will delete a line from a file. The line to be deleted is stored in a variable, and constructed from a command line argument. Here’s what I have so far:

#!/bin/sh
repo=$1
devscript=/usr/local/bin/svn-post-commit-update-$repo-dev
livescript=/usr/local/bin/svn-post-commit-update-$repo-live
sudoer="www-data    ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: $devscript, $livescript"
sed -i '//$sudoer/ d' /home/bdugan/t.txt

And I am getting the following error:

sed: -e expression #1, char 3: unknown command: `$’

I realize that at this point there is some simple syntax issue that I’ve messed up, but for the life of me I can’t find it. Any ideas?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The key point is that you must use double quotes so the variable gets expanded. Otherwise, sed sees the dollar sign literally.

    Also key is that your pattern contains slashes. You must use alternate delimiters:

    sed -i "\|$sudoer|d" /home/bdugan/t.txt

    Choose a delimiter that is unlikely to appear in the string.

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