Andreas Berglund wrote: > I have a problem with the following sed snippet > sed -i s"|^\( *PATH="\)\(.*\)|\1$ADD:\2|" ~/profile-test > I need soft quotes in order for $ADD to expand and I also need to > math against one doublequote in the regexp in for $ADD to be put in > the corrct place. Does anyone know how to do this? You will need to quote double-quotes within double-quotes. sed -i s"|^\( *PATH=\"\)\(.*\)|\1$ADD:\2|" ~/profile-test The above seems like you are doing more than you need with the long match for (.*) and \2. It isn't needed. It is much more efficient to avoid matching a potentially infinite amount of data. sed -i "s|^\( *PATH=\"\)|\1$ADD:|" ~/profile-test Sometimes quoting can be complicated. In which case it is often useful to drop out of double quotes and move to single quotes. sed -i "s|^\( *PATH="'"'"\)|\1$ADD:|" ~/profile-test That "'"'" looks scary but isn't. ..." '"' "... One double quote to stop the double quoted string. One single, one double, one single, to insert one double quote. Then another double quote to pick up the double quoted string. Or reverse it for the variable. Which is probably what I would do there. sed -i 's|^\( *PATH="\)|\1'"$ADD"':|' ~/profile-test Bob
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