My text looks like this:

'test' file:

123,James,123,"
hello "X"
this is a "string", cool.
another "string", here.
",7

My goal: in all lines that doesn't match the pattern [^number,string,number] or [^",number] replace " with '.

meaning, the out put should like:

123,James,123,"
hello 'X'
this is a 'string', cool.
another 'string', here.
",7

my sed command so far is:

sed '/\(^[0-9]*,.*,[0-9]*\|^",[0-9]\)/!s/"/'/g' test

my problem is in the substitue part, i'm trying to escape but it doesn't let me, and i can't seems to find a solution to it. if i try to switch ' with # for example, it works. I tried : ...!s/"/\'/g' but it doesn't work.

Would love your help! thanks!

[SOLVED]: for those who also have this problem, i switched the open paranthese to " and escaped also the ! the solution:

sed "/\(^[0-9]*,.*,[0-9]*\|^\",[0-9]\)/\!s/\"/'/g"

CodePudding user response：

With your shown samples please try following awk code. Written and tested in GNU awk should work in any awk version.

awk '!/^"/ && !/^[0-9] .*[a-zA-Z] [0-9] /{gsub(/"/,"\047")} 1' Input_file

CodePudding user response：

Using sed

$ sed -E '/^(",)?[0-9] ($|,[[:alpha:]] ,[0-9])/!s/"/'"'"'/g' input_file
123,James,123,"
hello 'X'
this is a 'string', cool.
another 'string', here.
",7

CodePudding user response：

You can use sed -E so that you don't have to escape the parenthesis.

Note that:

• if you use [0-9]* you will match optional digits, [0-9] matches 1 or more digits.
• For the string part you use .* but that matches the whole line

For example

sed -E "/(^[0-9] ,.*,[0-9]|^\",[0-9])/!s/\"/'/g" test

Using awk and if for example in the first check there can be only 2 comma's:

awk '!/^(",[0-9]|[0-9] ,[^,]*,[0-9])/{gsub(/"/,"\047")}1' test

Both will output:

123,James,123,"
hello 'X'
this is a 'string', cool.
another 'string', here.
",7

CodePudding user response：

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed -E '/^("|[0-9] ,[^,] ),[0-9] /!y/"/'\''/' file

If the line does not match the required strings then translate all "'s to ''s.

N.B. The idiom '\'' punches a hole into the shell and \' then quotes the single quote.