Question

Ok I guess I need something that will do the following:

search for this line of code in /var/lib/asterisk/bin/retrieve_conf:

$engineinfo = engine_getinfo();

insert these two lines immediately following:

$engineinfo['engine']="asterisk";
$engineinfo['version']="1.6.2.11";

Thanks in advance,
Joe

Answer 1

You could do it like this

sed -ne '/$engineinfo = engine_getinfo();/a\'$'\n''$engineinfo['engine']="asterisk";\'$'\n''$engineinfo['version']="1.6.2.11";'$'\n'';p' /var/lib/asterisk/bin/retrieve_conf

Add -i for modification in place once you confirm that it works.

What does it do and how does it work?

First we tell sed to match a line containing your string. On that matched line we then will perform an a command, which is “append text”.

The syntax of a sed a command is

a\
line of text\
another line
;

Note that the literal newlines are part of this syntax. To make it all one line (and preserve copy-paste ability) in place of literal newlines I used $'\n' which will tell bash or zsh to insert a real newline in place. The quoting necessary to make this work is a little complex: You have to exit single-quotes so that you can have the $'\n' be interpreted by bash, then you have to re-enter a single-quoted string to prevent bash from interpreting the rest of your input.

EDIT: Updated to append both lines in one append command.