Sign Up

Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.

Have an account? Sign In

Have an account? Sign In Now

Sign In

Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.

Sign Up Here

Forgot Password?

Don't have account, Sign Up Here

Forgot Password

Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.

Have an account? Sign In Now

You must login to ask a question.

Forgot Password?

Need An Account, Sign Up Here

Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.

Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.

Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.

Sign InSign Up

The Archive Base

The Archive Base Logo The Archive Base Logo

The Archive Base Navigation

  • Home
  • SEARCH
  • About Us
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
Search
Ask A Question

Mobile menu

Close
Ask a Question
  • Home
  • Add group
  • Groups page
  • Feed
  • User Profile
  • Communities
  • Questions
    • New Questions
    • Trending Questions
    • Must read Questions
    • Hot Questions
  • Polls
  • Tags
  • Badges
  • Buy Points
  • Users
  • Help
  • Buy Theme
  • SEARCH
Home/ Questions/Q 101305
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Editorial Team
Asked: May 11, 20262026-05-11T00:44:43+00:00 2026-05-11T00:44:43+00:00

I have a skeleton text file with placeholder strings: blah blah blah blah $PLACEHOLDER_1$

  • 0

I have a skeleton text file with placeholder strings:

blah blah blah blah $PLACEHOLDER_1$ blah $PLACEHOLDER_2$ 

and so on. Specific ‘form’ of placeholders does not matter — I may change them to whatever most comfortable for specific implementation.

I have a bash script where I know values for placeholders, and I need to generate a new file, with placeholders replaced with values.

#! /bin/sh PLACEHOLDER_1 = 'string 1' PLACEHOLDER_2 = 'multiline  string  2' # TODO: Generate file output.txt from file output.template  #       using placeholders above. 

I may do this in multiple passes with sed, but it is not fun. I do not want to use Perl. I want to use textutils and bash itself only.

What is the best way to do what I want in a single pass?

  • 1 1 Answer
  • 0 Views
  • 0 Followers
  • 0
Share
  • Facebook
  • Report

Leave an answer
Cancel reply

You must login to add an answer.

Forgot Password?

Need An Account, Sign Up Here

1 Answer

  • Voted
  • Oldest
  • Recent
  • Random
  1. 2026-05-11T00:44:44+00:00Added an answer on May 11, 2026 at 12:44 am

    You can still use sed to do the replace in a single pass. You just need to specify all the replacements in one command.

    eg.

    sed -i 's/PLACEHOLDER_1/string 1/g;s/PLACEHOLDER_2/string 2/g' <file> 
    • 0
    • Reply
    • Share
      Share
      • Share on Facebook
      • Share on Twitter
      • Share on LinkedIn
      • Share on WhatsApp
      • Report

Sidebar

Ask A Question

Stats

  • Questions 74k
  • Answers 74k
  • Best Answers 0
  • User 1
  • Popular
  • Answers
  • Editorial Team

    How to approach applying for a job at a company ...

    • 7 Answers
  • Editorial Team

    How to handle personal stress caused by utterly incompetent and ...

    • 5 Answers
  • Editorial Team

    What is a programmer’s life like?

    • 5 Answers
  • added an answer find . | grep 'your_pattern' | xargs mv destination_directory Does… May 11, 2026 at 2:17 pm
  • added an answer Really dumb 'workaround', and I'm sure it'll get downvoted, but… May 11, 2026 at 2:17 pm
  • added an answer You need to also check for '\r\n' and '\r', as… May 11, 2026 at 2:17 pm

Related Questions

I have a page where search resuts are shown both in a grid and
I've recently started work on a new project using EpiServer which I am totally
Any using nHibernate with a Domain object & DTO object implemented from a common
I have a parser that is effectively a set of recursive functions operating on

Trending Tags

analytics british company computer developers django employee employer english facebook french google interview javascript language life php programmer programs salary

Top Members

Explore

  • Home
  • Add group
  • Groups page
  • Communities
  • Questions
    • New Questions
    • Trending Questions
    • Must read Questions
    • Hot Questions
  • Polls
  • Tags
  • Badges
  • Users
  • Help
  • SEARCH

Footer

© 2021 The Archive Base. All Rights Reserved
With Love by The Archive Base

Insert/edit link

Enter the destination URL

Or link to existing content

    No search term specified. Showing recent items. Search or use up and down arrow keys to select an item.