SED inplace file change inside make - How? - sed

Question

sed inplace change on a file is not working inside Make object.
I want to replace a line in a file with sed called in a make object. But it does not seem to be working. How can I fix this?
change_generics:
ifeq ($(run_TESTNAME), diagnostics)
ifeq ($(run_TESTCASE), 1)
sed -i -e "s/SIM_MULTI\==[a-z,A-Z]*/SIM_MULTI=TRUE/" ./generics.f
else ifeq ($(TESTCASE), 2)
sed -i -e "s/SIM_MISSED\==[a-z,A-Z]*/SIM_MISSED=TRUE/" ./generics.f
endif
endif
I would like the generics.f file changed with that one line change. But it remains the same as the original. The sed command works outside make.

Answer 1

I can't reproduce this using GNU sed 4.2.2 and GNU make 3.82, or at least, I can't reproduce any scenario where the same sed command works from the command line but not in a Makefile.
Simpler Makefile:
all:
# Contrived just so I can test your 2 sed commands.
sed -i -e "s/SIM_MULTI\==[a-z,A-Z]*/SIM_MULTI=TRUE/" ./generics.f
sed -i -e "s/SIM_MISSED\==[a-z,A-Z]*/SIM_MISSED=TRUE/" ./generics.f
Sample file content in generics.f:
SIM_MULTI=foo
SIM_MISSED=bar
Testing:
$ make all
sed -i -e "s/SIM_MULTI\==[a-z,A-Z]*/SIM_MULTI=TRUE/" ./generics.f
sed -i -e "s/SIM_MISSED\==[a-z,A-Z]*/SIM_MISSED=TRUE/" ./generics.f
Confirmed that both sed commands fail to edit a file with this content.
To fix:
Probably, you need to simply remove the \= from your regular expression. The backslash there has no effect, and causes your regex to simply match two equals signs ==. Thus this works:
all:
sed -i 's/SIM_MULTI=[a-zA-Z]*/SIM_MULTI=TRUE/' ./generics.f
sed -i 's/SIM_MISSED=[a-zA-Z]*/SIM_MISSED=TRUE/' ./generics.f
Testing:
$ make all
sed -i 's/SIM_MULTI=[a-zA-Z]*/SIM_MULTI=TRUE/' ./generics.f
sed -i 's/SIM_MISSED=[a-zA-Z]*/SIM_MISSED=TRUE/' ./generics.f
$ cat generics.f
SIM_MULTI=TRUE
SIM_MISSED=TRUE
Further explanation:
There is no need to specify -e there.
There is no need to enclose the script in double quotes, which is riskier because it allows the contents to be modified by the shell.
The bug appears to be \= and I deleted those characters, as mentioned above.
Note that I removed the comma , as well in [a-z,A-Z]. I think that probably isn't what you meant, and it would cause a class of characters including a-z, A-Z and a comma , to be matched by the regex. (And if it is what you mean, you might consider writing it as [a-zA-Z,] as that would be less confusing.)
If this has not resolved your issue, I would need to know things like:
What is the version of your sed.
What is the contents in generics.f.

Answer 2

POSIX/GNU sed have c for "change":
sed -i '/SIM_MULTI=/c\SIM_MULTI=TRUE'
sed -i '/SIM_MISSED=/c\SIM_MISSED=TRUE'