sed replace * in url with text in json file

user_19156791 0
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I'm looking to change the value of a key in a json file

Example:

"House":"sample.house.city"

Need to change the word "sample" to something else.

I can do this with:

sed -i 's|sample.house.city|town-home.house.city|g' file.json

but there is no guarantee that "sample" is going to be the same every time.

I've tried:

sed -i 's|*.house.city|town-home.house.city|g' file.json

but it doesn't change.

Also tried:

sed -i 's|"*.house.city"|"town-home.house.city"|g' file.json

but that ends up like:

"sample"town-home.house.city"

Any recommendations on how to do this correctly?

sed unix bash json
2 Answers

Explanation

  • 1st Capturing Group (\w+)

    • \w matches any word character (equivalent to [a-zA-Z0-9_])
    • + matches the previous token between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)

  • 2nd Capturing Group (.house.city)

    • \. matches the character .
    • house matches the characters house literally (case sensitive)
    • \. matches the character .
    • city matches the characters city literally (case sensitive)

  • Global pattern flags

    • g modifier: global. All matches (don't return after first match)

  • \2 replace with the 2nd Captured Group (.house.city)

$ sed -E 's/(\w+)(\.house\.city)/town-home\2/g' <<< '"House":"sample.house.city"'

"House":"town-home.house.city"

$ sed -iE 's/(\w+)(\.house\.city)/town-home\2/g' file.json
user_41778280

To match any word, you can use [[:alnum:]_]* (POSIX BRE) / [[:alnum:]_]+ (POSIX ERE):

sed -i 's|[[:alnum:]_]*\.house\.city|townhome.house.city|g' file.json

See the online demo:

#!/bin/bash
s='"House":"sample.house.city"'
sed 's|[[:alnum:]_]*\.house\.city|townhome.house.city|g' <<< "$s"

Output:

"House":"townhome.house.city"

Note you also need to escape dots that are used to match literal dots.

user_38329700
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