[SOLVED] sed: -e expression #1, char 137: unterminated `s' command

redd9 · 03-24-2020, 06:53 PM

Hi everyone, I am very new to using sed and Bash scripting, and created this file to practise:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
readarray -d "|" myarray < listOfURLs
for i in "${myarray[@]}"
do
        #echo "{$i}" 
        sed -i "s@URL@$$i@g" HTMLTemplate > filledInHTMLTemplate
done

The purpose of the code is to read a bunch of URLs from listOfURLs, and replace the text URL in HTMLTemplate with one of the URLs ( a different one each time, iterating through the whole array).

However, I get the error

Code:

sed: -e expression #1, char 137: unterminated `s' command

when I try to run my script. I've tried escaping the sed line in different ways, but nothing helps. Any ideas?

Edit: Also, the HTMLTemplate contains the first URL over and over again replacing the text 'URL'.

berndbausch · 03-24-2020, 09:40 PM

I am not sure if the double dollar in $$i has a purpose or is a typo.

Why did you comment out the echo? Most likely something in the $i (or $$i) causes sed's hiccup, and the echo is a good way to figure this out. Perhaps there is an "@" in the variable?
By the way, you probably intended echo "${i}", though echo "{$i}" shouldn't cause any harm.

Another oddity, though probably not related to the error message, is the usage of sed's -i option. Its effect is to modify the HTMLTemplate file and to output nothing. This is probably not your intention.

rknichols · 03-24-2020, 09:42 PM

First, you are misusing the "-i" option, which is telling sed to modify the HTMLTemplate file in place rather than sending a modified version to stdout. It's probably good that it didn't work.

To answer your specific question, the most likely cause is that $i is expanding to a string that contains one or more "@" characters. It's difficult to make the sed 's' command work reliably with arbitrary strings expanded into the command. Frequently, I use the ctrl-G (ASCII BEL, or '\007') as a delimiter in such situations, but to be completely general you might have to pre-scan the string and find some character that is not present there. How to insert such nonprinting characters into your script depends on which editor you are using.

[EDIT] I was a bit slow, I see.

berndbausch · 03-24-2020, 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rknichols

[EDIT] I was a bit slow, I see.

Not quite. The problem with variable strings in sed substitutions had not occurred to me for some reason. Good insight.

redd9 · 03-31-2020, 05:56 PM

Thank you everyone! I had mistyped the original script, so will mark this as solved.

redd9 · 04-02-2020, 10:13 PM

For those interested, here is the script that actually worked:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
readarray -d "|" urls < parsedURLs

        for i in ${urls[@]}
        do
                sed "s,URL,${i},g" template >> filledTemplate

        done

I then ran

Code:

sort filledTemplate | uniq -u >> completeTemplate

to ensure there were no duplicates.