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linuxbashsedstring-substitution

sed: -e expression #1, char 52: unknown option to `s'

I am just using simple sed substitution to replace some strings in a file by reading its value from a variable

cat file.txt

root="/content/drive/Shared drives/Media Library"
# some other lines
# ...

In the above file txt , I am intending to substitute /content/drive/Shared drives/Media Library in line 1 with the value of a variable path being read through a bash script .

For example - If i enter /home/user as value of variable ,the line 1 in file.txt should be modified as follows :

root="/home/user"

Here's my bash script with the sed expression

#!/usr/bin/env bash

read -e -p "Enter the path: " path

sed -i "1s/\/content\/drive\/Shared drives\/Media Library/${path}/" file.txt

When i execute the bash script and enter path as /home/user , it returns the following error -

sed: -e expression #1, char 52: unknown option to `s'
Solution

  • When processing file paths with sed, you can make things easier by using an alternate delimiter that is not a part of the values to be processed. The delimiter can be any character that follows the s command. The forward slash / is often seen in examples, but can be any other character like | or #. This makes it unnecessary to escape the / in the values. For example:

    sed -i  "1s|/content/drive/Shared drives/Media Library|${path}|" file.txt