Lets look into a fairly simple task with a slight twist today - update/modify a part of the file paths mentioned within a file using Sed from command line in Unix/Mac OS X. Mark this as a tricky interview question.
Let's consider a simple example. For instance we have a text file named Filepaths.txt which has the following file path details :
Here we want to replace only a part of the file path i.e replace all instances of the word"Downloads" with "Documents". Sure you can instantly do it in some text editor using "Replace All". But the catch is I want to replace the word Downloads with Documents if and only if it exists in the /Users/ironcladzone/Downloads/ path. I want to skip all other file paths. In this case I want the path /Users/Shared/Downloads/Test1 & /Users/Shared/Downloads/ABC to remain intact and unchanged.
So let's see how to do it from command line using a Sed regex.
Open up terminal and type this :
So here's the output as expected. Cheers!
Let's consider a simple example. For instance we have a text file named Filepaths.txt which has the following file path details :
/Users/ironcladzone/Downloads/file1.txt
/Users/ironcladzone/Downloads/image.jpg
/Users/ironcladzone/Downloads/presentation.ppt
/Users/ironcladzone/Downloads/Spreadsheet.xls
/Users/ironcladzone/Downloads/Audio.mp3
/Users/ironcladzone/Downloads/Movie.avi
/Users/Shared/Downloads/Test1
/Users/Shared/Downloads/ABC
/Users/ironcladzone/Downloads/MovieClip.mov
Here we want to replace only a part of the file path i.e replace all instances of the word"Downloads" with "Documents". Sure you can instantly do it in some text editor using "Replace All". But the catch is I want to replace the word Downloads with Documents if and only if it exists in the /Users/ironcladzone/Downloads/ path. I want to skip all other file paths. In this case I want the path /Users/Shared/Downloads/Test1 & /Users/Shared/Downloads/ABC to remain intact and unchanged.
So let's see how to do it from command line using a Sed regex.
Open up terminal and type this :
sed 's/\/Users\/ironcladzone\/Downloads/\/Users\/ironcladzone\/Documents/g' FilePaths.txt
So here's the output as expected. Cheers!
/Users/ironcladzone/Documents/file1.txt
/Users/ironcladzone/Documents/image.jpg
/Users/ironcladzone/Documents/presentation.ppt
/Users/ironcladzone/Documents/Spreadsheet.xls
/Users/ironcladzone/Documents/Audio.mp3
/Users/ironcladzone/Documents/Movie.avi
/Users/Shared/Downloads/Test1
/Users/Shared/Downloads/ABC
/Users/ironcladzone/Documents/MovieClip.mov
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