Replacing text in specific position from another file

Question

I need to replace the text from File2.txt to File1.txt between 5th and 8th position. It supposed to be any character between 5th and 8th position, I just need to replace with new characters in mentioned position and remaining position character should be same as it is.

File1.txt:

abcd9876efghijklmno
abcd9676efghijklmno
abcd9886efghijklmno
abcd9976efghijklmno

File2.txt:

Expected output:

abcd1234efghijklmno
abcd4321efghijklmno
abcd6543efghijklmno
abcd5678efghijklmno

Command I tried

sed '/substr($0,5,4)/r File2.txt' File1.txt >file_new.txt

Nice task to learn text processing in the shell. How did you try to solve it? What went wrong? — Philippos, Jul 17 '17 at 08:18
i couldn't even able to get the exact command to test it. thanks @Philippos — Prakash Balusamy, Jul 17 '17 at 08:20
Few of us get a command exactly right on the first try. *What did you try?* Also, is each file just one line long? — Scott - Слава Україні, Jul 17 '17 at 08:23
And if you edit your question after it has already been edited to get the formatting correctly, why don't you have a look how it has been done and keep the correct formatting? — Philippos, Jul 17 '17 at 08:34
sed '/substr($0,5,4)/r File2.txt' File1.txt >file_new.txt is a command i tried @Scott — Prakash Balusamy, Jul 17 '17 at 08:36
Once posted the question, i came to know the formatting issue. so edited @Philippos — Prakash Balusamy, Jul 17 '17 at 08:36
@PrakashBalusamy 10+ lines in both files or only in `File1.txt`? do you want to replace 5-8 character positions on every line or only some specific lines? and `substr($0,5,4)` looks like a function from `awk`.. do not mix it with `sed` — Sundeep, Jul 17 '17 at 08:57
consider same number of lines in both files (File1.txt & File2.txt), and in every line i want to replace the every line. Please suggest some ideas. Thanks @Sundeep — Prakash Balusamy, Jul 17 '17 at 09:04
I would suggest to modify your samples to reflect this... say 5 lines each and show the expected output... — Sundeep, Jul 17 '17 at 09:15

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 17 '17 at 09:22

0

This looks somewhat bizarre, but:

dd if=file1 bs=1 count=4 > file3
dd if=file2 bs=1 count=4 >> file3
dd if=file1 bs=1 skip=8 >> file3

You haven't mentioned copying over any newline in file2, and it looks as if you didn't want it (if there is one).

answered Jul 17 '17 at 09:22

Bob Eager

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It's not working, I need to replace 10+ lines at a time in same position, always file1 & file 2 have same no of lines and i need to replace the values in file1 alone not in file2. – Prakash Balusamy Jul 17 '17 at 11:36
@PrakashBalusamy you are not helping yourself by not giving better input samples and expected output... – Sundeep Jul 17 '17 at 11:53
Edited the question @sundeep formatting doesn't looks good. Consider each word as skngle line in each file – Prakash Balusamy Jul 17 '17 at 12:26

Sundeep · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-17T12:50:47.440

0

Probably easier to use combination of paste+cut

$ paste -d'\0' <(cut -c1-4 File1.txt) File2.txt <(cut -c9- File1.txt)
abcd1234efghijklmno
abcd4321efghijklmno
abcd6543efghijklmno
abcd5678efghijklmno

-d'\0' so that the inputs are combined without any character between
- See also paste files without delimiter
<() is process substitution
cut -c1-4 gives first four characters from each line
cut -c9- gives all characters from each line starting from 9th position

Another way is idiomatic two file processing using awk

$ awk 'NR==FNR{a[FNR]=$0; next} {print substr($0,1,4) a[FNR] substr($0,9)}' File2.txt File1.txt
abcd1234efghijklmno
abcd4321efghijklmno
abcd6543efghijklmno
abcd5678efghijklmno

NR==FNR{a[FNR]=$0; next} saves all lines from File2.txt in array a with line number as key
print substr($0,1,4) a[FNR] substr($0,9) use substr to extract necessary characters and insert the lines from File2.txt in between

edited Jul 17 '17 at 12:50

answered Jul 17 '17 at 12:37

Sundeep

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Thanks @Sundeep, it works good. between one more doubt File1.txt: abcd9876efghijklmno1234 abcd9676efghijklmno2345 abcd9886efghijklmno3456 abcd9976efghijklmno4567 Expected Result: abcd1234efghijklmno abcd2345efghijklmno abcd3456efghijklmno abcd4567efghijklmno How to replace the 20-23rd position character to 5-8th position ? – Prakash Balusamy Jul 17 '17 at 14:24
should be easy to modify... `awk '{print substr($0,1,4) substr($0,20,4) substr($0,9,11)}' File1.txt` bit of playing with substr would have helped you... if an answer solves your question, see https://unix.stackexchange.com/help/someone-answers on what to do... – Sundeep Jul 17 '17 at 14:39
It's working perfectly :) – Prakash Balusamy Jul 18 '17 at 06:26

Replacing text in specific position from another file

2 Answers2