Error with sed replacing string

Question

Hello I need to replace a string but i receive error using string 'return false;'

#!bin/bash
oldstring='{alert("bash")}'
newstring='{return false;}'
grep -rl $oldstring /home/commons.bundle.js | xargs sed -i s/$oldstring/$newstring/g

error: sh deleteBoo.sh sed: espressione -e #1, carattere 25: comando `s' non terminato

Quote your variable expansions - see [Why does my shell script choke on whitespace or other special characters?](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/131767/65304) — steeldriver, Feb 03 '21 at 16:58
As two side notes, there's no need to recursively grep against one file; additionally, there's no need to grep for the string, since sed will only replace strings that it matched. — Jeff Schaller, Feb 03 '21 at 17:07
Running your script with `bash -x yourscript` might help in some cases. Paste it at http://shellcheck.net to check for errors with automatic suggestions how to fix some problems. (Unfortunately shellcheck doesn't suggest to quote all variables.) — Bodo, Feb 03 '21 at 17:24
Apart from what others have said, running `sed` from `xargs` with the output of `grep` will likely not do what you want as the lines matching the expression given to `grep` would be used as _arguments_, not input data, with `sed`. — Kusalananda, Feb 03 '21 at 17:27

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 04 '21 at 02:03

grep -rlZF -- "$oldstring" /home/commons.bundle.js |
xargs -r0 sed -i "s/$oldstring/$newstring/g" --

The following minor changes should make it work:

grep should use -F so that the strings passed are not evaluated by grep as regexes.
Another grep option to use is -Z which will pass filenames onto xargs using the null delimiter.
At the receiving end, xargs with -0 will unpack safely the filenames now. Nulls cannot occur in filenames by `law'

Error with sed replacing string

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