[SOLVED] How do I make this sed script a "one liner"?

Issue

I would like this script

sed -i "/INTERPRETER_PYTHON_DISTRO_MAP/,/version_added/ {
    /default/a\    linux:\n      '8': \/usr\/local
    }" base.yaml

rewritten to fit one line. Here's what I tried:

sed -i "/INTERPRETER_PYTHON_DISTRO_MAP/,/version_added/ {/default/a\    linux:\n      '8': \/usr\/local}" base.yaml

but it isn't working. I'm currently being harassed by this error:

sed: -e expression #1, char 0: unmatched `{'

Solution

An ANSI C string -- with $'' -- can contain backslash escapes, like \n -- so you can have a newline in sed's arguments while still having the shell command invoking sed be only one line.

sed -i $'/INTERPRETER_PYTHON_DISTRO_MAP/,/version_added/ {\n    /default/a\\    linux:\\n      \'8\': \\/usr\\/local\n    }'

---

Insofar as your real goal is to build a RUN command for a Dockerfile, you can use jq to tell you how to escape any arbitrary command -- including multi-line commands -- as JSON:

printf '%s\0' sed -i "/INTERPRETER_PYTHON_DISTRO_MAP/,/version_added/ {
    /default/a\    linux:\n      '8': \/usr\/local
    }" base.yml | jq -Rrs '"RUN \(. | split("\u0000") | tojson)"'

...emits as output:

RUN ["sed","-i","/INTERPRETER_PYTHON_DISTRO_MAP/,/version_added/ {\n    /default/a\\    linux:\\n      '8': \\/usr\\/local\n    }","base.yml"]

Answered By - Charles Duffy

Answer Checked By - David Goodson (WPSolving Volunteer)