How to replace second column of csv file with a specific value “XYX”

awksed

To replace last field of csv file with xyz I use following command:

awk -F, '{$NF="xyz";}1' OFS=, file

How can I overwrite the second column of file with value xyz?

Best Answer

In awk the variable NF is the number of fields on the current line. You can refer to each field like $1,$2...$NF where $1 is the first field and $2 is the second field, upto $NF which is the last field on the current line (i.e. if NF is 5 then $NF is $5).

$ cat file
1,2,3,4,5

$ awk '$2="XYX"' FS=, OFS=, file
1,XYX,3,4,5

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How to replace a newline (\n) using sed

sed is intended to be used on line-based input. Although it can do what you need.

A better option here is to use the tr command as follows:

tr '\n' ' ' < input_filename

or remove the newline characters entirely:

tr -d '\n' < input.txt > output.txt

or if you have the GNU version (with its long options)

tr --delete '\n' < input.txt > output.txt

Bash – How to do a recursive find/replace of a string with awk or sed

find /home/www \( -type d -name .git -prune \) -o -type f -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i 's/subdomainA\.example\.com/subdomainB.example.com/g'

-print0 tells find to print each of the results separated by a null character, rather than a new line. In the unlikely event that your directory has files with newlines in the names, this still lets xargs work on the correct filenames.

$ -type d -name .git -prune $ is an expression which completely skips over all directories named .git. You could easily expand it, if you use SVN or have other folders you want to preserve -- just match against more names. It's roughly equivalent to -not -path .git, but more efficient, because rather than checking every file in the directory, it skips it entirely. The -o after it is required because of how -prune actually works.

For more information, see man find.

Best Answer

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How to replace a newline (\n) using sed

Bash – How to do a recursive find/replace of a string with awk or sed

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