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Asked: 2026-06-16T19:25:40+00:00

I’m trying to run a regex over an XML file (Jira export file, to

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I’m trying to run a regex over an XML file (Jira export file, to be precise) to fix an issue with some JQL-queries in it.

I’m looking for an attribute called “request”, it contains a query. In that query, usernames need to be wrapped in HTML-entities for quotes ("quot;).
A username always follows the string “reporter = ‘, “assignee = “, or “watcher = “, except for one special case: the string currentUser() is not a username and does not need to be replaced.

 Original:
 <SearchRequest id="10000" name="Example" author="myusername" user="myusername" request="reporter = anotheruser and status != Closed" favCount="1"/>
 Result:
 <SearchRequest id="10000" name="Example" author="myusername" user="myusername" request="reporter = &quot;anotheruser&quot; and status != Closed" favCount="1"/>

 Search:
 (request=".*?(reporter|assignee|watcher) = )(?!currentUser)([a-z.]+)(.*?")

 Replace:
 $1&amp;$3&amp;$4

This has been tried and tested in SublimeText 2, and Regex Tester 2, and works correctly. As you can see, it uses a lookahead to detect the negative case for currentUser. Now, when I try to use this regex in Sed, it errors out:

$ sed -i '' -E 's/(request=".*?(reporter|assignee|watcher) = )(?!currentUser)([a-z.]+)(.*?")/$1&amp;$3&amp;$4/g' entities.xml
sed: 1: "s/(request=".*?(reporte ...": RE error: repetition-operator operand invalid

I’m not sure how to proceed now, as sed is new territory to me. I’m inclined to think it’s the lookahead that causes this problem. Perhaps there’s a simpler way to fulfil this requirement?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Unfortunately lookaheads/behinds are not support in sed you should take a lot at ssed (super sed). Here is the FAQ if you want more information.

    Also this could be done in perl if you are familiar, which I am not (I tagged with perl so you should get some help).

    Using the -P option with grep verifies your match:

    $ grep -Po '(request=".*?(reporter|assignee|watcher) = )(?!currentUser)([a-z.]+)(.*?")' <<< '<SearchRequest id="10000" name="Example" author="myusername" user="myusername" request="reporter = anotheruser and status != Closed" favCount="1"/>'
request="reporter = anotheruser and status != Closed"
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