Question

I have a file, cache.md, that starts off like this:

# 2012-05-09.8271
CACHE MANIFEST

CACHE:
/index.html

I’m trying to write a shell script (using Automator in OS X Lion) to replace the first line and change the text (after the hash) to today’s date, a dot, and a random number.

Here’s the bash script I have so far, but it doesn’t do anything.

_now=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")
_rand=$RANDOM
sed -i '' '1 s/[\d\-\.]+/$_now.$_rand/' ~/Desktop/cache.mf

Answer 1

Use this sed command:

sed -i '' '1 s/^#.*$/'"# $_now.$_rand"'/' ~/Desktop/cache.mf