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I do wish to modify a Mac OS X sandbox file via a one-line (copy and paste) command, by inserting a new line — containing a regex — after a line that contains a specific string (also being a regex pattern).

The file to edit requires root rights and is located at /usr/share/sandbox/clamd.sb.

Both search and append lines contain loads of usually to be escaped characters because these are regex-es and containing paths.

Search for line containing

(regex #"^/private/var/clamav/")

Note: the string is preceded with tabs in one case.

Insert this line before the match

    (regex #"^/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TrustEvaluationAgent.framework/Versions/A/TrustEvaluationAgent\$")

Note: this to be inserted new-line-string should be prepended with one tab (\t).

My failing try

sudo sed -i '' -e $'/(regex #"\^\/private\/var\/clamav\/")/a \t(regex #"\^\/System\/Library\/PrivateFrameworks\/TrustEvaluationAgent\.framework\/Versions\/A\/TrustEvaluationAgent\\\$")' /usr/share/sandbox/clamd.sb
sed: 1: "/(regex #"\^\/private\/ ...": command a expects \ followed by text

Question

How to fix the above sed command

or

supply a better readable and working alternative that can be used to copy from a website and paste into the Mac OS X terminal (bash) to extend this sandbox configuration file?

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    1) You need i to insert before the match, not a. 2) Avoid picket fence (i.e. use a delimiter like | - keep in mind that in a context address you have to escape the first one). 3) With i or a you only need to escape backslashes and the end of lines (except the last one): sed -e '\|(regex #"^/private/var/clamav/")|i\' -e ' (regex #"^/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TrustEvaluationAgent.framework/Versions/A/TrustEvaluationAgent\\$")' the leading space in the second expression is a literal tab. – don_crissti Oct 27 '16 at 22:05
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    Don't use -i '' until you're sure your command is correct. -i is for in-place editing, not for testing your command. :) – Wildcard Oct 27 '16 at 22:07
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    @don_crissti, macOS Sed will strip out that leading tab character, so that command won't work exactly as requested. – Wildcard Oct 28 '16 at 1:28
  • see if this works out.. seq 4 | sed '/3/ s/.*/ abc\n&/' ... replace /3/ with appropriate search pattern and ` abc` with line to insert before matching line – Sundeep Oct 28 '16 at 5:08
  • @Wildcard - yeah, I left a comment about this on your Q - I still think it's doable with i or a but anyway, even if it wasn't, imo it's still easier to run sed '\|(regex #"^/private/var/clamav/")|s|^| (regex #"^/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TrustEvaluationAgent.fr‌​amework/Versions/A/T‌​rustEvaluationAgent\‌​\$")\n&|' (replacing the n in \n with a literal newline) - similar to what Sundeep suggests above - than doing all that escaping with awk... – don_crissti Oct 28 '16 at 12:25
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You can't do this with macOS Sed, because it strips leading whitespace from the lines that you are inserting.

Using Awk:

awk '/\(regex #"\^\/private\/var\/clamav\/"\)/ {print "\t(regex #\"^/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TrustEvaluationAgent.framework/Versions/A/TrustEvaluationAgent\$\")"}; {print}' /usr/share/sandbox/clamd.sb > ~/temp-clamd.sb

Note that I've redirected the output to ~/temp-clamd.sb rather than editing the file in place (which is tricky or impossible with BSD Awk).

Next you can check that the changes are as you expect with:

diff /usr/share/sandbox/clamd.sb ~/temp-clamd.sb

If everything is correct, overwrite the contents of the original file with the modified copy (don't use mv, which would change the inode, permissions, owner):

cat ~/temp-clamd.sb | sudo tee /usr/share/sandbox/clamd.sb
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  • The awk result is that the diff is not able to find any difference between /usr/share/sandbox/clamd.sb and ~/temp-clamd.sb. The sed is ok, except for the minor issue that the <tab> \t is not inserted. The new line directly starts with (regex. – Pro Backup Oct 28 '16 at 0:55
  • @ProBackup, see edit re Sed result. I got it on the Awk result; are you certain that line has no trailing whitespace or anything similar? Compare the results of grep -F "(regex #\"^/private/var/clamav/\")" /usr/share/sandbox/clamd.sb and grep -xF "(regex #\"^/private/var/clamav/\")" /usr/share/sandbox/clamd.sb; are they the same? (Do they both output a line?) – Wildcard Oct 28 '16 at 1:00
  • The first grep -F does output 1 line. The second grep -xF does not output a line. There doesn't seem to be a trailing whitespace character. – Pro Backup Oct 28 '16 at 1:17
  • @ProBackup, that means the line has leading or trailing space. (The -F means "fixed string comparison" rather than regex, and -x limits it to whole line matches.) Tweak the expression until it shows up with -xF as well as -F, and then drop that exact string into the Awk equality test. It's hard to tell from your comment formatting, but possibly " (regex #\"^/private/var/clamav/\")" is what you need (note the leading space at the beginning). – Wildcard Oct 28 '16 at 1:19
  • @mikeserv, not helpful. An Awk string equality check should work perfectly fine. The only trick is to ensure we have the full line in the equality check. – Wildcard Oct 28 '16 at 1:26

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