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I have a complicated string that I need to search for and replace

I need to replace:

common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/*.jar,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/classes,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/*.jar

With 

#common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/*.jar,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/classes,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/*.jar common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/*.jar,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/classes,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib/ext,${catalina.home}/lib/ext/*.jar

I'm afraid that I can't use python or any other scripting language (my bash script is currently 100+ lines)

So far I have a test file that contains the string in question and I am trying to use this sed command:

#!/bin/sh sed -i 's:common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/*.jar,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/classes,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/*.jar:#common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/*.jar,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/classes,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/*.jar\ncommon.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/*.jar,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/classes,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib/ext,${catalina.home}/lib/ext/*.jar:' workers.properties

No errors are thrown, but nothing gets replaced either. Do I need to escape certain characters inside the string?

Any advice would help, thanks!

UPDATE: The command I used was similar to Joe's:

sed -i -e 's:^\(common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/\*\.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/\*\.jar,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/classes,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/\*\.jar$\):#\1\n\1,${catalina.home}/lib/ext,${catalina.home}/lib/ext/*.jar:' /etc/tomcat6/catalina.properties
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  • Do you have many different lines that begin "common.loader" ? Commented May 16, 2011 at 20:54
  • Actually, thats the only line that begins with 'common.loader' Commented May 16, 2011 at 21:04

2 Answers 2

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You need to escape the '*' for it to work, you will probably want to escape the '.' for a more accurate match, the period will match any character, and the asterisk with match between any number of characters.

This will do the match you need:

sed -e 's:^\(common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/\*\.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/\*\.jar,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/classes,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/\*\.jar$\):#\1,${catalina.home}/lib/ext,${catalina.home}/lib/ext/*.jar:' workers.properties

I escaped each meta-character (. and *) added anchors (^ and $) and used a back-reference with ( and ) so the old part of the pattern could be resused.

This is a decent guide to sed: http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html

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  • I changed it a little bit, but this helped me a lot, thanks! Commented May 16, 2011 at 21:40
  • 1
    @PeteHerbertPenito: for completeness can you post the solution as either an edit to Joe's answer or to your question please? Commented May 17, 2011 at 6:22
  • @Iain - added it to my question, cheers! Commented May 17, 2011 at 15:13
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This will do it - create a file with the following sed commands in e.g. sed.script

 /^common\.loader/ { s|^common|#common| a common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home} /lib,${catalina.home}/lib/*.jar,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/classes,/var/lib/tomcat6/common/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib/ext,${catalina.home}/lib/ext/*.jar }

then use it like this 

sed -i -f sed.script filetoedit

you may want to make a copy of the file so you can call it like so

sed -i.bak -f sed.script filetoedit
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