Question

I have a command that outputs some text that I would like to input to the sed’s “replaced text” field. But I’m getting the

sed: -e expression #1, char 24: unterminated `s' command error.

Here is the important snippet:

input=$(./mid 1 10 random.txt)       
echo $input       
cat $1 |sed "s/times/$input/g" > tester5.txt

And here is the command line output:

$ ./Batchtest tester.txt      
some random text some random text some random text some random text      
sed: -e expression #1, char 24: unterminated `s' command

As you can see the “./mid 1 10 random.txt” outputs some text that I want to plugin to sed’s “replaced text” field, but it’s not working. I’ve tried adding quotes around $input, but that doesn’t help.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

With awk, you can put the output in a variable using the -v option. Using this method, you don’t have to worry about characters special to sed’s syntax in the output.

input=$(./mid 1 10 random.txt)
awk -v input="$input" '{ gsub(/times/,input); print }' "$1" > tester5.txt