[SOLVED] Environment variable substitution in sed

Issue

If I run these commands from a script:

#my.sh
PWD=bla
sed 's/xxx/'$PWD'/'
...
$ ./my.sh
xxx
bla

it is fine.

But, if I run:

#my.sh
sed 's/xxx/'$PWD'/'
...
$ ./my.sh
$ sed: -e expression #1, char 8: Unknown option to `s' 

I read in tutorials that to substitute environment variables from shell you need to stop, and 'out quote' the $varname part so that it is not substituted directly, which is what I did, and which works only if the variable is defined immediately before.

How can I get sed to recognize a $var as an environment variable as it is defined in the shell?

Solution

Your two examples look identical, which makes problems hard to diagnose. Potential problems:

1. You may need double quotes, as in sed 's/xxx/'"$PWD"'/'

2. $PWD may contain a slash, in which case you need to find a character not contained in $PWD to use as a delimiter.

To nail both issues at once, perhaps

sed 's@xxx@'"$PWD"'@'

Answered By - Norman Ramsey