How to replace only last match in a line with sed? - sed

With sed, I can replace the first match in a line using
sed 's/pattern/replacement/'
And all matches using
sed 's/pattern/replacement/g'
How do I replace only the last match, regardless of how many matches there are before it?

Copy pasting from something I've posted elsewhere:
$ # replacing last occurrence
$ # can also use sed -E 's/:([^:]*)$/-\1/'
$ echo 'foo:123:bar:baz' | sed -E 's/(.*):/\1-/'
foo:123:bar-baz
$ echo '456:foo:123:bar:789:baz' | sed -E 's/(.*):/\1-/'
456:foo:123:bar:789-baz
$ echo 'foo and bar and baz land good' | sed -E 's/(.*)and/\1XYZ/'
foo and bar and baz lXYZ good
$ # use word boundaries as necessary - GNU sed
$ echo 'foo and bar and baz land good' | sed -E 's/(.*)\band\b/\1XYZ/'
foo and bar XYZ baz land good
$ # replacing last but one
$ echo 'foo:123:bar:baz' | sed -E 's/(.*):(.*:)/\1-\2/'
foo:123-bar:baz
$ echo '456:foo:123:bar:789:baz' | sed -E 's/(.*):(.*:)/\1-\2/'
456:foo:123:bar-789:baz
$ # replacing last but two
$ echo '456:foo:123:bar:789:baz' | sed -E 's/(.*):((.*:){2})/\1-\2/'
456:foo:123-bar:789:baz
$ # replacing last but three
$ echo '456:foo:123:bar:789:baz' | sed -E 's/(.*):((.*:){3})/\1-\2/'
456:foo-123:bar:789:baz
Further Reading:
Buggy behavior if word boundaries is used inside a group with quanitifiers - for example: echo 'it line with it here sit too' | sed -E 's/with(.*\bit\b){2}/XYZ/' fails
Greedy vs. Reluctant vs. Possessive Quantifiers
Reference - What does this regex mean?
sed manual: Back-references and Subexpressions

This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed 's/\(.*\)pattern/\1replacement/' file
Use greed to swallow up the pattern space and then regexp engine will step back through the line and find the first match i.e. the last match.

A fun way to do this, is to use rev to reverse the characters of each line and write your sed replacement backwards.
rev input_file | sed 's/nrettap/tnemecalper/' | rev

Related

Using a single sed call to split and grep

This is mostly by curiosity, I am trying to have the same behavior as:
echo -e "test1:test2:test3"| sed 's/:/\n/g' | grep 1
in a single sed command.
I already tried
echo -e "test1:test2:test3"| sed -e "s/:/\n/g" -n "/1/p"
But I get the following error:
sed: can't read /1/p: No such file or directory
Any idea on how to fix this and combine different types of commands into a single sed call?
Of course this is overly simplified compared to the real usecase, and I know I can get around by using multiple calls, again this is just out of curiosity.
EDIT: I am mostly interested in the sed tool, I already know how to do it using other tools, or even combinations of those.
EDIT2: Here is a more realistic script, closer to what I am trying to achieve:
arch=linux64
base=https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com
split="<Contents>"
curl $base \
| sed -e 's/<Contents>/<Contents>\n/g' \
| grep $arch \
| sed -e 's/^<Key>\(.*\)\/chromedriver.*/\1/' \
| sort -V > out
What I would like to simplify is the curl line, turning it into something like:
curl $base \
| sed 's/<Contents>/<Contents>\n/g' -n '/1/p' -e 's/^<Key>\(.*\)\/chromedriver.*/\1/' \
| sort -V > out
Here are some alternatives, awk and sed based:
sed -E "s/(.*:)?([^:]*1[^:]*).*/\2/" <<< "test1:test2:test3"
awk -v RS=":" '/1/' <<< "test1:test2:test3"
# or also
awk 'BEGIN{RS=":"} /1/' <<< "test1:test2:test3"
Or, using your logic, you would need to pipe a second sed command:
sed "s/:/\n/g" <<< "test1:test2:test3" | sed -n "/1/p"
See this online demo. The awk solution looks cleanest.
Details
In sed solution, (.*:)?([^:]*1[^:]*).* pattern matches an optional sequence of any 0+ chars and a :, then captures into Group 2 any 0 or more chars other than :, 1, again 0 or more chars other than :, and then just matches the rest of the line. The replacement just keeps Group 2 contents.
In awk solution, the record separator is set to : and then /1/ regex is used to only return the record having 1 in it.
This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed 's/:/\n/;/^[^\n]*1/P;D' file
Replace each : and if the first line in the pattern space contains 1 print it.
Repeat.
An alternative:
sed -Ez 's/:/\n/g;s/^[^1]*$//mg;s/\n+/\n/;s/^\n//' file
This slurps the whole file into memory and replaces all colons by newlines. All lines that do not contain 1 are removed and surplus newlines deleted.
An alternative to the really ugly sed is: grep -o '\w*2\w*'
$ printf "test1:test2:test3\nbob3:bob2:fred2\n" | grep -o '\w*2\w*'
test2
bob2
fred2
grep -o: only matching
Or: grep -o '[^:]*2[^:]*'
echo -e "test1:test2:test3" | sed -En 's/:/\n/g;/^[^\n]*2[^\n]*(\n|$)/P;//!D'
sed -n doesn't print unless told to
sed -E allows using parens to match (\n|$) which is newline or the end of the pattern space
P prints the pattern buffer up to the first newline.
D trims the pattern buffer up to the first newline
[^\n] is a character class that matches anything except a newline
// is sed shorthand for repeating a match
//! is then matching everything that didn't match previously
So, after you split into newlines, you want to make sure the 2 character is between the start of the pattern buffer ^ and the first newline.
And, if there is not the character you are looking for, you want to D delete up to the first newline.
At that point, it works for one line of input, with one string containing the character you're looking for.
To expand to several matches within a line, you have to ta, conditionally branch back to label :a:
$ printf "test1:test2:test3\nbob3:bob2:fred2\n" | \
sed -En ':a s/:/\n/g;/^[^\n]*2[^\n]*(\n|$)/P;D;ta'
test2
bob2
fred2
This is simply NOT a job for sed. With GNU awk for multi-char RS:
$ echo "test1:test2:test3:test4:test5:test6"| awk -v RS='[:\n]' '/1/'
test1
$ echo "test1:test2:test3:test4:test5:test6"| awk -v RS='[:\n]' 'NR%2'
test1
test3
test5
$ echo "test1:test2:test3:test4:test5:test6"| awk -v RS='[:\n]' '!(NR%2)'
test2
test4
test6
$ echo "foo1:bar1:foo2:bar2:foo3:bar3" | awk -v RS='[:\n]' '/foo/ || /2/'
foo1
foo2
bar2
foo3
With any awk you'd just have to strip the \n from the final record before operating on it:
$ echo "test1:test2:test3:test4:test5:test6"| awk -v RS=':' '{sub(/\n$/,"")} /1/'
test1

How to remove after second period in a string using sed

In my script, have a possible version number: 15.03.2 set to variable $STRING. These numbers always change. I want to strip it down to: 15.03 (or whatever it will be next time).
How do I remove everything after the second . using sed?
Something like:
$(echo "$STRING" | sed "s/\.^$\.//")
(I don't know what ^, $ and others do, but they look related, so I just guessed.)
I think the better tool here is cut
echo '15.03.2' | cut -d . -f -2
This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed 's/\.[^.]*//2g' file
Remove the second or more occurrence of a period followed by zero or non-period character(s).
$ echo '15.03.2' | sed 's/\([^.]*\.[^.]*\)\..*/\1/'
15.03
More generally to skip N periods:
$ echo '15.03.2.3.4.5' | sed -E 's/(([^.]*\.){2}[^.]*)\..*/\1/'
15.03.2
$ echo '15.03.2.3.4.5' | sed -E 's/(([^.]*\.){3}[^.]*)\..*/\1/'
15.03.2.3
$ echo '15.03.2.3.4.5' | sed -E 's/(([^.]*\.){4}[^.]*)\..*/\1/'
15.03.2.3.4

Escape line beginning and end in bracket expressions in sed

How do you escape line beginning and line end in bracket expressions in sed?
For example, let's say I want to replace both comma, line beginning, and line end in each line with pipe:
echo "a,b,c" | sed 's/,/|/g'
# a|b|c
echo "a,b,c" | sed 's/^/|/g'
# |a,b,c
echo "a,b,c" | sed 's/$/|/g'
# a,b,c|
echo "a,b,c" | sed 's/[,^$]/|/g'
# a|b|c
I would expect the last command to produce |a|b|c|. I also tried escaping the line beginning and line end via backslash, with no change.
With GNU sed with extended regular expressions, you can do:
$ echo "a,b,c" | /opt/gnu/bin/sed -E 's/^|,|$/|/g'
|a|b|c|
$
The -E option enables the extended regular expressions, as does -r, but -E is also used by other sed variants for the same purpose, unlike -r.
However, for reasons which elude me, the BSD (macOS) variant of sed produces:
$ echo "a,b,c" | sed -E 's/^|,|$/|/g'
|a|b|c
$
I can't think why.
If this variability is unacceptable, go with the three-substitution solution:
$ echo "a,b,c" | sed -e "s/^/|/" -e "s/$/|/" -e "s/,/|/g"
|a|b|c|
$
which should work with any variant of sed. However, note that echo "" | sed …3 subs… produces || whereas the -E variant produces |. I'm not sure if there's an easy fix for that.
You tried this, but it didn't do what you wanted:
$ echo "a,b,c" | sed 's/[,^$]/|/g'
a|b|c
$
This is what should be expected. Inside character classes, most special characters lose their special-ness. There is nothing special about $ (or , but it isn't a metacharacter anyway) in a character class; ^ is only special at the start of the class and it negates the character class. That means that what follows shows the correct, expected behaviour from this permutation of the contents of your character class:
$ echo "a,b\$\$b,c" | sed 's/[^,$]/|/g'
|,|$$|,|
$
It mapped all the non-comma, non-dollar characters to pipes. I should be using single quotes around the echo; then the backslashes wouldn't be necessary. I just followed the question's code quietly.
Following sed may help you in same.
echo "a,b,c" | sed 's/^/|/;s/,/|/g;s/$/|/'
Output will be as follows.
|a|b|c|

sed to copy part of line to end

I'm trying to copy part of a line to append to the end:
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/all/GCA/900/169/985/GCA_900169985.1_IonXpress_024_genomic.fna.gz
becomes:
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/all/GCA/900/169/985/GCA_900169985.1/GCA_900169985_IonXpress_024_genomic.fna.gz
I have tried:
sed 's/\(.*(GCA_\)\(.*\))/\1\2\2)'
$ f1=$'ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/all/GCA/900/169/985/GCA_900169985.1_IonXpress_024_genomic.fna.gz'
$ echo "$f1"
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/all/GCA/900/169/985/GCA_900169985.1_IonXpress_024_genomic.fna.gz
$ sed -E 's/(.*)(GCA_.[^.]*)(.[^_]*)(.*)/\1\2\3\/\2\4/' <<<"$f1"
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/all/GCA/900/169/985/GCA_900169985.1/GCA_900169985_IonXpress_024_genomic.fna.gz
sed -E (or -r in some systems) enables extended regex support in sed , so you don't need to escape the group parenthesis ( ).
The format (GCA_.[^.]*) equals to "get from GCA_ all chars up and excluding the first found dot" :
$ sed -E 's/(.*)(GCA_.[^.]*)(.[^_]*)(.*)/\2/' <<<"$f1"
GCA_900169985
Similarly (.[^_]*) means get all chars up to first found _ (excluding _ char). This is the regex way to perform a non greedy/lazy capture (in perl regex this would have been written something like as .*_?)
$ sed -E 's/(.*)(GCA_.[^.]*)(.[^_]*)(.*)/\3/' <<<"$f1"
.1
Short sed approach:
s="ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/all/GCA/900/169/985/GCA_900169985.1_IonXpress_024_genomic.fna.gz"
sed -E 's/(GCA_[^._]+)\.([^_]+)/\1.\2\/\1/' <<< "$s"
The output:
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/all/GCA/900/169/985/GCA_900169985.1/GCA_900169985_IonXpress_024_genomic.fna.gz

How to find and replace all percent, plus, and pipe signs?

I have a document containing many percent, plus, and pipe signs. I want to replace them with a code, for use in TeX.
% becomes \textpercent.
+ becomes \textplus.
| becomes \textbar.
This is the code I am using, but it does not work:
sed -i "s/\%/\\\textpercent /g" ./file.txt
sed -i "s/|/\\\textbar /g" ./file.txt
sed -i "s/\+/\\\textplus /g" ./file.txt
How can I replace these symbols with this code?
Test script:
#!/bin/bash
cat << 'EOF' > testfile.txt
1+2+3=6
12 is 50% of 24
The pipe character '|' looks like a vertical line.
EOF
sed -i -r 's/%/\\textpercent /g;s/[+]/\\textplus /g;s/[|]/\\textbar /g' testfile.txt
cat testfile.txt
Output:
1\textplus 2\textplus 3=6
12 is 50\textpercent of 24
The pipe character '\textbar ' looks like a vertical line.
This was already suggested in a similar way by #tripleee, and I see no reason why it should not work. As you can see, my platform uses the very same version of GNU sed as yours. The only difference to #tripleee's version is that I use the extended regex mode, so I have to either escape the pipe and the plus or put it into a character class with [].
nawk '{sub(/%/,"\\textpercent");sub(/\+/,"\\textplus");sub(/\|/,"\\textpipe"); print}' file
Tested below:
> echo "% + |" | nawk '{sub(/%/,"\\textpercent");sub(/\+/,"\\textplus");sub(/\|/,"\\textpipe"); print}'
\textpercent \textplus \textpipe
Use single quotes:
$ cat in.txt
foo % bar
foo + bar
foo | bar
$ sed -e 's/%/\\textpercent /g' -e 's/\+/\\textplus /g' -e 's/|/\\textbar /g' < in.txt
foo \textpercent bar
foo \textplus bar
foo \textbar bar