On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 03:56:39PM -0400, Nori Heikkinen wrote: > a friend just asked me about a shell script she's trying to write. > she's got a file that looks like this: > > blah blah thi. blah thi. blah blah > blah thi. blah thi. blah blah blah > > &c. -- lots of "thi."s in there. > > she's trying something equivalent to: > > word1=thi.; > word2=this; > sed 's/$word1/$word2/g' file > file.new;
Try using double quotes, ie: sed "s/$word1/$word2/g" file > file.new; and thank Colin Watson for answering this sort of question so many times ;-) > > and it doesn't replace. > > i can replicate this from the command line. the only way i can make > it work is to type out > > sed 's/thi./this/g' file > file.new; > > escaping the period in $word1 does nothing. > > are we just misunderstarding the sed command somehow? otherwise, > afa[we]k, this is totally weird ... > > thanks, > > </nori> > > -- > .~. nori @ sccs.swarthmore.edu > /V\ http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~nori/jnl/ > // \\ @ maenad.net > /( )\ www.maenad.net > ^`~'^ > get my (*new*) key here: > http://www.maenad.net/geek/gpg/7ede5499.asc > (please *remove* old key 11e031f1!) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]