How can I get the following:
to print:
In other words I want to replace everything in quotes, including an optional , with blank. Also it should read 2 strings of quotes: "Im a test" and "another test" rather than one long string: "Im a test",dont remote this,"another test"

TIA

, is a regular char, you can use it as is. What is the problem with it? Did you try some scripts already?

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks!! I didn't know you need to escape the question mark.

Also what does this part mean: [^"] (start of string or quote?)

Firstly, why you got your result, * is greedy bey default, hence it looks for the largest match possible to your expression, so ".*" matches "Im a test",dont remote this,"another test". You confirm this with a simple grep
with colouring turned on:
As for [^"], ^ means the start of the line when not escaped or in square brackets. When the first item in square brackets it negates anything else included in them, so in this case it says return everything that is not "

The reason for escaping the ? is so sed does not interpret it as a ? but so it says zero or one of the preceding character, ie. the comma (,). Alternative you can remove the escape if you use the -r option for sed.

1 members found this post helpful.

Now its coming back, I totally forgot about that.