Replace whole line containing a string using Sed

Rahul picture Rahul · Jun 28, 2012 · Viewed 547.3k times · Source

I have a text file which has a particular line something like

sometext sometext sometext TEXT_TO_BE_REPLACED sometext sometext sometext

I need to replace the whole line above with

This line is removed by the admin.

The search keyword is TEXT_TO_BE_REPLACED

I need to write a shell script for this. How can I achieve this using sed?

Answer

Todd A. Jacobs picture Todd A. Jacobs · Jun 28, 2012

You can use the change command to replace the entire line, and the -i flag to make the changes in-place. For example, using GNU sed:

sed -i '/TEXT_TO_BE_REPLACED/c\This line is removed by the admin.' /tmp/foo