Escape text before piping to sed

Question

I am passing to sed for replacement text that seems to have some characters that it does not like.
The text comes from git log graph and is something like:

ID- desc author                                                                                                   
ID- desc author

I get unescaped newline inside substitute pattern
How can I escape everything before piping to sed?

Example:    
COMMIT=$(git log my_branch...origin/master --pretty=format:'%h %an')    
FINAL=$(cat msg.txt | sed -E "s/--PLACEHOLDER--/$COMMIT/)

The error message tells you where the problem is. But you pose a question asking how to modify _something else instead_. — JdeBP, Jun 11 '18 at 12:35
@JdeBP: The thing is I don't understand what it complaints about — Jim, Jun 11 '18 at 13:33
Then you should be asking what the error message means, not assuming a meaning for it and proceeding to ask how to do something elsewhere. — JdeBP, Jun 11 '18 at 13:58
@Kusalananda: The output of git. I can't see any problem. It is like I mentioned in the post the format — Jim, Jun 11 '18 at 14:34
@Jim I can see that. What I can't see is what the value of `$COMMIT` is that you get on your system with your Git repository. — Kusalananda, Jun 11 '18 at 15:42
@Kusalananda:If I pipe to `od -t a` there is no weird character there. I do see a `nl` in the end of each line but even if I pipe to `tr -d '\n'` I still get the same error — Jim, Jun 11 '18 at 20:47

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 11 '18 at 14:43

1

You can do it with plain bash parameter substitution:

msg=$(< msg.txt)
# or, for this demo
msg="This is the commit message.
--PLACEHOLDER--
That's it."

commit="id1 - message 1
id2 - message 2
id3 - message 3"

final="${msg//--PLACEHOLDER--/"$commit"}"
echo "$final"

This is the commit message.
id1 - message 1
id2 - message 2
id3 - message 3
That's it.

answered Jun 11 '18 at 14:43

glenn jackman

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This works but what's up with the double quote around "$commit"? Works without that – Jim Jun 11 '18 at 15:26

Escape text before piping to sed

1 Answers1