replace specific html in files from a BASH Script

Question

I have a number of HTML files that have the same section I want replaced:

  <div id="main-content" class="span12">
    <h1 id="404-page-not-found" style="text-align: center">404</h1>
    <p style="text-align: center"><strong>Page not found</strong></p>
    <p style="text-align: center"><a href=".">Home</a></p>
  </div>

I want to replace this code with {{NAV}}

I feel like I can do something like:

bash script:

#!/bin/bash
find -name '*.html' | while read FILE; do
    sed --in-place -f replace.sed "$FILE"
done

replace.sed:

<my code above here>{
    r replacement
    d
}

replacement:

{{NAV}}

But I cannot get the code I want gone and replaced correct in replace.sed.

Can anyone think of a better way or how to format my code properly?

multi line replacement is not trivial with sed, you either replace newlines with some other delimiter to replace at once, or write a sed program to match line by line. If you text is well formatted, awk might be a better option. — karakfa
– karakfa, Commented Jan 11, 2016 at 22:22

Benjamin W. · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-12 02:18:42Z

1

If you replace your replace.sed with this, it should work:

/<div id="main-content" class="span12">/ {  # If we match the first line
    :x               # Label to branch to
    N                # Read next line into pattern buffer
    /<\/div>$/! bx   # If we don't match the closing tag, branch to x
    c \{{NAV}}       # Replace the pattern buffer with {{NAV}}
}

This works if the first and last line are enough to uniquely identify the piece of html to replace. If you want to exactly match the whole snippet, you could do it like this:

/^<div id="main-content" class="span12">/ {
    N
    /<h1 id="404-page-not-found" style="text-align: center">404<\/h1>/! b
    N
    /<p style="text-align: center"><strong>Page not found<\/strong><\/p>/! b
    N
    /<p style="text-align: center"><a href=".">Home<\/a><\/p>/! b
    N
    /<\/div>$/ c \{{NAV}}
}

This one works as follows:

If the first line is matched, load the next line (N)
If the pattern space now doesn't match the second line, branch to the end of the cycle (b) and print the pattern space, else load the next line
Repeat for lines three and four
If now the closing tag is at the end of the pattern space, replace the whole pattern space with {{NAV}}, else just print it

edited Jan 12, 2016 at 2:18

answered Jan 12, 2016 at 2:06

Benjamin W.

54k19 gold badges135 silver badges136 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

8 Comments

Jasmine Over a year ago

I am trying the first one and getting:

$ /usr/local/Library/ENV/4.3/sed -i .bak -f replace.sed 404.html sed: 3: replace.sed: extra characters at the end of N command

Benjamin W. Over a year ago

@Jason Which version of sed are you using? Some flavours don't play well with comments.

Jasmine Over a year ago

I am using whatever is part of OS X 10.11. I'm sorry man sed doesn't seem to have a version flag so I can double check. I can try to remove the comments too

Jasmine Over a year ago

FYI, the second one gives me a similar error but with h and not N

Benjamin W. Over a year ago

@Jason sed --version usually shows the version. And there is no h in the second one...?

|

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

replace specific html in files from a BASH Script

1 Answer 1

8 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

8 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related