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I've been looking online for this answer and cannot seem to find it.
I have a config file that contains:
VAR1=VALUE1
VAR2=VALUE2
VAR3=VALUE3
VAR4=VALUE4
VAR5=VALUE5
VAR6=VALUE6
And I want to change VAR5's value from VALUE5 to VALUE10. Unfortunately, I do not know the value of VALUE5 so I cannot search for it. So basically I need to use sed (or whatever) to replace the value of VAR5 to another value.
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How SED Works. In the syntax, you only need to provide a suitable “new string” name that you want to be placed with the “old string”. Of course, the old string name needs to be entered as well. Then, provide the file name in the place of “file_name” from where the old string will be found and replaced.
Find and replace text within a file using sed command The procedure to change the text in files under Linux/Unix using sed: Use Stream EDitor (sed) as follows: sed -i 's/old-text/new-text/g' input.txt. The s is the substitute command of sed for find and replace.
To edit any config file, simply open the Terminal window by pressing the Ctrl+Alt+T key combinations. Navigate to the directory where the file is placed. Then type nano followed by the filename that you want to edit. Replace /path/to/filename with the actual file path of the configuration file that you want to edit.
You can try this sed:
sed -i.bak 's/^\(VAR5=\).*/\1VALUE10/' file
It gives:
VAR1=VALUE1
VAR2=VALUE2
VAR3=VALUE3
VAR4=VALUE4
VAR5=VALUE10
VAR6=VALUE6
Even though the answer has been added to the question. I spent some time on how it works, I would like add some facts and my version of the answer,
sed -i 's,^\(THISISMYVARIABLE[ ]*=\).*,\1'THISISMYVALUE',g' config.cfg
Explanation:
sed 's/find_this/replace_with/', we are saying sed to search and replace. Also remember there are multiple other delimiters that we can use instead of /. Here , is used.^\(THISISMYVARIABLE[ ]*=\).* . This means we are grouping the match THISISMYVARIABLE[ ]*= . ([ ]* to cover if there are any spaces after the key)\1 is a back-reference. We are referencing the first group in the regular expression that we used for match.
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