Replace one substring for another string in shell script
BashShellBash Problem Overview
I have "I love Suzi and Marry" and I want to change "Suzi" to "Sara".
#!/bin/bash
firstString="I love Suzi and Marry"
secondString="Sara"
# do something...
The result must be like this:
firstString="I love Sara and Marry"
Bash Solutions
Solution 1 - Bash
To replace the first occurrence of a pattern with a given string, use ${parameter/pattern/string}
:
#!/bin/bash
firstString="I love Suzi and Marry"
secondString="Sara"
echo "${firstString/Suzi/"$secondString"}"
# prints 'I love Sara and Marry'
To replace all occurrences, use ${parameter//pattern/string}
:
message='The secret code is 12345'
echo "${message//[0-9]/X}"
# prints 'The secret code is XXXXX'
(This is documented in the Bash Reference Manual, §3.5.3 "Shell Parameter Expansion".)
Note that this feature is not specified by POSIX — it's a Bash extension — so not all Unix shells implement it. For the relevant POSIX documentation, see The Open Group Technical Standard Base Specifications, Issue 7, the Shell & Utilities volume, §2.6.2 "Parameter Expansion".
Solution 2 - Bash
This can be done entirely with bash string manipulation:
first="I love Suzy and Mary"
second="Sara"
first=${first/Suzy/$second}
That will replace only the first occurrence; to replace them all, double the first slash:
first="Suzy, Suzy, Suzy"
second="Sara"
first=${first//Suzy/$second}
# first is now "Sara, Sara, Sara"
Solution 3 - Bash
For Dash all previous posts aren't working
The POSIX sh
compatible solution is:
result=$(echo "$firstString" | sed "s/Suzi/$secondString/")
This will replace the first occurrence on each line of input. Add a /g
flag to replace all occurrences:
result=$(echo "$firstString" | sed "s/Suzi/$secondString/g")
Solution 4 - Bash
Try this:
sed "s/Suzi/$secondString/g" <<<"$firstString"
Solution 5 - Bash
It's better to use Bash than sed
if strings have regular expression characters.
echo ${first_string/Suzi/$second_string}
It's portable to Windows and works with at least as old as Bash 3.1.
To show you don't need to worry much about escaping, let's turn this:
/home/name/foo/bar
Into this:
~/foo/bar
But only if /home/name
is in the beginning. We don't need sed
!
Given that Bash gives us magic variables $PWD
and $HOME
, we can:
echo "${PWD/#$HOME/\~}"
Thanks for Mark Haferkamp in the comments for the note on quoting/escaping ~
.*
Note how the variable $HOME
contains slashes, but this didn't break anything.
Further reading: Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide.
If using sed
is a must, be sure to escape every character.
Solution 6 - Bash
If tomorrow you decide you don't love Marry either she can be replaced as well:
today=$(</tmp/lovers.txt)
tomorrow="${today//Suzi/Sara}"
echo "${tomorrow//Marry/Jesica}" > /tmp/lovers.txt
There must be 50 ways to leave your lover.
Solution 7 - Bash
echo [string] | sed "s/[original]/[target]/g"
- "s" means "substitute"
- "g" means "global, all matching occurrences"
Solution 8 - Bash
Since I can't add a comment. @ruaka To make the example more readable write it like this
full_string="I love Suzy and Mary"
search_string="Suzy"
replace_string="Sara"
my_string=${full_string/$search_string/$replace_string}
or
my_string=${full_string/Suzy/Sarah}
Solution 9 - Bash
Using AWK:
firstString="I love Suzi and Marry"
echo $firstString | awk '{gsub("Suzi","Sara"); print}'
Solution 10 - Bash
Pure POSIX shell method, which unlike Roman Kazanovskyi's sed
-based answer needs no external tools, just the shell's own native parameter expansions. Note that long file names are minimized so the code fits better on one line:
f="I love Suzi and Marry"
s=Sara
t=Suzi
[ "${f%$t*}" != "$f" ] && f="${f%$t*}$s${f#*$t}"
echo "$f"
Output:
I love Sara and Marry
How it works:
-
Remove Smallest Suffix Pattern.
"${f%$t*}"
returns "I love
" if the suffix$t
"Suzi*
" is in$f
"I love
Suzi and Marry
". -
But if
t=Zelda
, then"${f%$t*}"
deletes nothing, and returns the whole string "I love Suzi and Marry
". -
This is used to test if
$t
is in$f
with[ "${f%$t*}" != "$f" ]
which will evaluate to true if the$f
string contains "Suzi*
" and false if not. -
If the test returns true, construct the desired string using Remove Smallest Suffix Pattern
${f%$t*}
"I love
" and Remove Smallest Prefix Pattern${f#*$t}
"and Marry
", with the 2nd string$s
"Sara
" in between.
Solution 11 - Bash
I use tr
(part of GNU coreutils) to replace all occurrence of a substring.
firstString="I love Suzi and Marry"
secondString="Sara"
echo $firstString | tr "Suzi" "$secondString"
My favorite:
echo $PATH | tr ":" "\n"