Question

I have two files:

super.conf

someconfig=23;
second line;

#blockbegin
dynamicconfig=12
dynamicconfig2=1323
#blockend

otherconfig=12;

input.conf

newdynamicconfig=12;
anothernewline=1234;

I want to run a script and have input.conf replace the contents between the #blockbegin and #blockend lines.

I already have this:

sed -i -ne '/^#blockbegin/ {p; r input.conf' -e ':a; n; /#blockend/ {p; b}; ba}; p' super.conf

It works well but until I change or remove #blockend line in super.conf, then script replaces all lines after #blockbegin.

---

In addition, I want script to replace block or if block doesn’t exists in super.conf append new block with content of input.conf to super.conf.
It can be accomplished by remove + append, but how to remove block using sed or other unix command?

Answer 1

I’ve written perl one-liner:

perl -0777lni -e 'BEGIN{open(F,pop(@ARGV))||die;$b="#blockbegin";$e="#blockend";local $/;$d=<F>;close(F);}s|\n$b(.*)$e\n||s;print;print "\n$b\n",$d,"\n$e\n" if eof;' edited.file input.file

Arguments:

edited.file – path to updated file
input.file – path to file with new content of block

Script first delete block (if find one matching) and next append new block with new content.