On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 10:44 AM, David <david@damnetwork.net> wrote:

I'm having a problem with perl *and* sed with a particular replace line. The lines I'm trying to search for, and replace, both have "/" characters, which is completely killing me.

line="password requisite /lib/security/$ISA/pam_cracklib.so retry=3"
newline="password required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_cracklib.so minlen=8 dcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 lcredit=0 minclass=3 retry=3"

Escape any special regexp characters with \

line="password requisite \/lib\/security\/$ISA\/pam_

cracklib.so retry=3"
newline="

password requisite \/lib\/security\/$ISA\/pam_

cracklib.so retry=3

See the following guide reference:

http://www.anaesthetist.com/mnm/perl/Findex.htm

I need to maintain whitespace, too.

perl -pi.bak -e 's/password requisite \/lib\/security\/$ISA\/pam_cracklib.so retry=3/password requisite \/lib\/security\/$ISA\/pam_cracklib.so retry=3/g' file

You might just type out the value of $ISA also -- it's a "special character" also (I would).

That tosses out all kinds of errors, since perl believes the first "/lib" line to be the next delimiter. Even using the magical \Q and \E things doesn't work. AARRGGHH!!!

Sed seems to have the same problem. Anyone have any ideas on how I can get this to work? And yes, unfortunately, I need to use the variables.

So, I know this was not the type of perl "quote" help you wanted....but it's worth noting:

http://xkcd.com/208/

Thanks,
David

<>time

--
"I find your lack of faith disturbing."
--Darth Vader
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