I want to replace the lines between two strings [REPORT] and [TAGS]. File looks like this
Many lines many lines they remain the same [REPORT] some text some more text412 [TAGS] text that I Want to stay the same!!!
I used sed within cygwin:
sed -e '/[REPORT]/,/[TAGS]/c\[REPORT]\nmy text goes here\nAnd a new line down here\n[TAGS]' minput.txt > moutput.txt
which gave me this:
Many lines many lines they remain the same [REPORT] my text goes here And a new line down here [TAGS] text that I Want to stay the same!!!
When I do this and open the output file in Notepad, it doesn't show the new lines. I assume that this is because of formatting issue a simple Dos2Unix should resolve the issue.
But because of this and also mainly due to the fact that not all of my colleagues have access to cygwin I was wondering if there's a way to do this in cmd (or Powershell if there is no way to do a batch).
Eventually, I want to run this on number of files and change this section of them (between those two aforementioned words) to the text that I am providing.
Use PowerShell, present from Windows 7 on.
## Q:\Test\2018\10\30\SO_53073481.ps1
## defining variable with a here string
$Text = @"
Many lines
many lines
they remain the same
[REPORT]
some text
some more text412
[TAGS]
text that I Want
to stay the same!!!
"@
$Text -Replace "(?sm)(?<=^\[REPORT\]`r?`n).*?(?=`r?`n\[TAGS\])",
"`nmy text goes here`nAnd a new line down here`n"
The -replace regular expression uses nonconsuming lookarounds
Sample output:
Many lines
many lines
they remain the same
[REPORT]
my text goes here
And a new line down here
[TAGS]
text that I Want
to stay the same!!!
To read text from file, replace and write back (even without storing in a var) you can use:
(Get-Content ".\file.txt" -Raw) -Replace "(?sm)(?<=^\[REPORT\]`r?`n).*?(?=`r?`n\[TAGS\])",
"`nmy text goes here`nAnd a new line down here`n"|
Set-Content ".\file.txt"
The parentheses are neccessary to reuse the same file name in one pipe.