Question

I want parse something like a section entry in an *.ini file:

line='      [          fdfd fdf         f   ]  '

What could be the sed pattern (???) for this line to split the

'fdfd fdf         f'

out?

So:

echo "${line}" | sed -E 's/???/\1/g'

How can I describe all chars except [[:space:]], [ and ] ? This doesn’t work for me: [^[[:space:]]\[]* .

Answer 1

$ echo "$line" | sed "s/^.*\[[[:space:]]*\([^]]*[^][:space:]]\)[[:space:]]*\].*$/'\1'/"

You can split the pattern into two:

$ echo "$line" | sed "s/^.*\[[[:space:]]*/'/; s/[[:space:]]*\].*$/'/"

awk works too:

$ echo "$line" | awk -F' *[[\]] *' -vQ="'" '{print Q$2Q}'