ksh: Replacing a word with asterisks causes bad substitution error

Question

I'm trying replace a specific word read from a file with asterisks of the same length. Eg; cat -> *** snake -> *****

So, in my script below, it works in bash but not in ksh

for next in `cat $filename`; do
        rep=${next//[^\"]/*}
        echo "$next replace with $rep"
done;

Running it in ksh gives me a bad substitution error, Any ideas? Thanks

Answer 1

In older versions of ksh, you'll have to use the sed command:

for next in `cat $filename`; do
        rep=$(print $next | sed 's/[^\"]/*/g')
        echo "$next replace with $rep"
done;