Sed Error: Unterminated 'S' Command

Question

I run below sed command

sed -i s/abc=.*$/abc=def ghi/g hpq_sf_attach_wf_param.txt

and it gave me error:

sed: -e expression #1, char 17: unterminated `s' command

I noticed it is due to space in between of def and ghi. Any idea how to fix it?

Accepted Answer

You need to use quoting to protect special characters, including spaces, $, and *.

sed -i 's/abc=.*$/abc=def ghi/g' hpq_sf_attach_wf_param.txt

Answer 2

So geekosaur had it right. The the reason you had the problem though is because it needs to be double quotes for the wildcards because with single quotes it takes them as literal characters, not for the meaning you want.

sed -i "s/abc=.*$/abc=def ghi/g" hpq_sf_attach_wf_param.txt

Also if the space between "def" and "ghi" gives you problems, adding a "\" should help making it read it as a literal space.

sed -i "s/abc=.*$/abc=def\ ghi/g" hpq_sf_attach_wf_param.txt

Sed Error: Unterminated 'S' Command

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2 Answers

Sophia Al-Mansoor