sed to find and replace a string with special characters

Question

Trying to replace

window.location = '/loft-run'+ResourceManager.hotlegs + mainPage + ".html#" + newhash;

to

window.location = ResourceManager.hotlegs + mainPage + ".html#" + newhash;

in a file. what I have tried

sed -i 's~/loft-run'+ResourceManager.hotlegs + mainPage + ".html#" + newhash"~ResourceManager.hotlegs + mainPage + ".html#" + newhash"' warmblanket.js

Have tried some sed commands but not much of help. Your suggestions would be of great help.

Answer 1

Like this:

sed -i "s@'/loft-run'\+@@" warmblanket.js

• the basic form for substitution is s/before/after/
• use double quotes if you want to treat single quotes
• chosen the @ delimiter here instead of basic /, you can pick up most of the ASCII table

Answer 2

sed doesn't know about literal strings, just regexps and backreference-enabled text. To do anything with literal strings just use a tool that understands them such as awk:

$ cat file
window.location = '/loft-run'+ResourceManager.hotlegs + mainPage + ".html#" + newhash;

$ awk \
    -v old="window.location = '/loft-run'+ResourceManager.hotlegs + mainPage + \".html#\" + newhash;" \
    -v new='window.location = ResourceManager.hotlegs + mainPage + ".html#" + newhash;' \
    's=index($0,old) { $0=substr($0,1,s-1) new substr($0,s+length(old)) } 1' file
window.location = ResourceManager.hotlegs + mainPage + ".html#" + newhash;

Note the use of " instead of ' around the old=... string because that string includes 's and shell doesn't allow 's inside a '-delimited string.