Re: [LUG] Sed experts wanted, perhaps?

[bad apple <mr.meowski@xxxxxxxx>]

On 19/04/13 21:36, Grant Phillips-Sewell wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm trying to write a little script that can read a file and invoke
> twidge to tweet its contents to Twitter.
>
> The # symbol, being a special character (I think) is the root the my
> problems... and being Twitter, the # symbol is going to be used a fair
> bit.
>
> If I invoke twidge from the command line as this:
>  $ twidge update "#generic #twitter #update"
> then all is well. The # symbol(s) are wrapped up in "" nicely.
>
> I haven't got to the reading-from-a-file bit yet, but here's what I have:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> # Send Twitter updates through Twidge
> command="twidge update"
> status="$@"
> $command $status
>
> As it is, if I have no # symbols, it will work fine... however pop a #
> in there and it fails. It also fails with # symbols if I wrap the last
> line as:
> $command "$status"

Single quotes instead?

>
> As it is, if I escape the # symbols, then it works fine... so I crack
> out sed...:
> status=`echo "$@" | sed -e "s/#/\#/g"` ... fails
> status=`echo "$@" | sed -e "s/\#/\\#/g"` ... fails (escaping the #
> symbol in sed)
> status=`echo "$@" | sed -e "s/\#/\\\#/g"` ... fails (escaping the #
> symbol and the \ symbol in the replacement string)

Maybe try another \ escape - don't forget the shell will escape too
another level up.

>
> Now, regexes of any nature have never been my strong point. I was
> successful with
> status=`echo "$@" | sed -e "s/~/#/g"` ... (replacing the ~ with the # symbol)
> but I don't really want my text file(s) to all have ~ instead of #
> symbols if I can get away with it.
>
> Anybody got any ideas?
>

Nothing in the world drives me crazier than this sort of scripting
madness - knees deep in awk and sed things get really confusing! You
know that you're close, it's just finding the exact invocation.

Regards

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