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Example1 work fine when I want to replace OLD_TEXT with NEW_TEXT ( its replace also all special characters as $@^%)(_+`:; etc ..)

  example1

  export OLD_TEXT='$$OLD_WORD$$'
  export NEW_TEXT='$$NEW_WORD$$'


  perl -pe 'next if /^#/; s/\Q$ENV{OLD_TEXT}\E/$1$ENV{NEW_TEXT}$2/g' file

on example2

I add the "[[:^alnum:]]" in the perl syntax in order to ignore TEXT that start with alpha numeric characters or end with alpha numric characters

but as all see it doesn't work why?

remark: alpha numric characters means numbers OR [a-z][A-Z]

Real Example

 #example2 on LINUX machine:


  more file

  ABC$$OLD_WORD$$ABC
  $$OLD_WORD$$

.

   perl -pe 'next if /^#/; s/(\Q|[[:^alnum:]])$ENV{OLD_TEXT}(\E|[[:^alnum:]])/$1$ENV{NEW_TEXT}$2/g' file

     $$NEW_WORD$$ABC$$$NEW_WORD$$$$$NEW_WORD$$OLD_$$NEW_WORD$$WORD$$$NEW_WORD$$$$$NEW_WORD$$ABC

.

Example what I should get:

  more file


  ABC$$OLD_WORD$$ABC
  $$NEW_WORD$$
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1 Answer 1

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1

You want [^[:alnum:]], not [[:^alnum:]]. [:alnum:] is the POSIX character class being referred to. The brackets surrounding the brackets of that character class are the scope that you want to be within.

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  • hi Chris - I change it but still its not replace the word : perl -pe 'next if /^#/; s/(\Q|[^[:alnum:]])$ENV{OLD_TEXT}(\E|[^[:alnum:]])/$1$ENV{NEW_TEXT}$2/g' file
    – yael
    Commented Dec 16, 2012 at 9:34

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