[timmerk]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knew how to do this using grep and other unix tools -

I am editing a database insert file and need to replace stuff like:

VALUES (1,2004-01-5',
VALUES (124,2014-01-5',
VALUES (14,2016-3-15',

to

VALUES (1,'2004-01-5',
VALUES (124,'2014-01-5',
VALUES (14,'2016-3-15',

so basically, I just need to insert an ' before the dates. The patten to find this is:

VALUES \([0-9]+,

but how can I replace all found values with the same thing, but with ' at the end?

Thanks!

[VEGAN]

Originally posted by timmerk:
Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knew how to do this using grep and other unix tools -

I am editing a database insert file and need to replace stuff like:

VALUES (1,2004-01-5',
VALUES (124,2014-01-5',
VALUES (14,2016-3-15',

to

VALUES (1,'2004-01-5',
VALUES (124,'2014-01-5',
VALUES (14,'2016-3-15',

so basically, I just need to insert an ' before the dates. The patten to find this is:

VALUES \([0-9]+,

but how can I replace all found values with the same thing, but with ' at the end?

Thanks!

Use, for example, `sed'

Let's assume you have the DATA in file called DATA.txt then you can do something like this:

sed "s/,/,'/" DATA.txt

This will only replace the first `,'-sign (with `,'' as you wanted).
If your problem is more complex, post it here. But the description you gave makes it seem pretty easy to solve

[timmerk]

Thanks - I figured out how to do it in BBedit using grep and for replace, i Used "&"

[Rainy Day]

The command line tool grep does not do editing nor replacing. But it did pioneer the use of regular expressions. Sometimes people refer to "grep" when what they really mean are "grep-like regular expressions," or more accurately, "regular expressions."

Two popular command line tools for editing using regular expressions are sed and perl.

[VEGAN]

Originally posted by Rainy Day:
The command line tool grep does not do editing nor replacing. But it did pioneer the use of regular expressions. Sometimes people refer to "grep" when what they really mean are "grep-like regular expressions," or more accurately, "regular expressions."

Two popular command line tools for editing using regular expressions are sed and perl.

Besides `sed' I rather like `awk' too

[ameat]

or perl:

Code:
% perl -pi -e 's/(VALUES \(\d+,)/$1'/g' FILENAME

...which is pretty handy too.