Gfilui

I am piggybacking of an existing question - I'm not sure how to add this to that question. The examples I see replace a single string - I need to replace multiple strings.

I am trying to change the same string that exists in multiple files in a directory using 'sed'. The string has multiple words. The template I using is:

sed -i 's/oldstring/newstring/g' test.txt

I want to change in a number of files in the same directory - i.e. change the string:

&VARIABLE1 = 10000000

to

&VARIABLE = 1

When I use the following

sed -i 's/&VARIABLE1 = 10000000/&VARIABLE = 1/g' *.txt

It does not do the substitution properly.

What am I doing wrong?

The & character has a special meaning on the replacement side of a sed s command:

 replacement may contain the special character & to refer to that
 portion of the pattern space which matched, and the special
 escapes 1 through 9 to refer to the corresponding matching
 sub-expressions in the regexp.

To make it literal, you need to escape it, &

Ex.

$ echo '&VARIABLE1 = 10000000' | sed 's/&VARIABLE1 = 10000000/&VARIABLE = 1/g'
&VARIABLE1 = 10000000VARIABLE = 1

but

$ echo '&VARIABLE1 = 10000000' | sed 's/&VARIABLE1 = 10000000/&VARIABLE = 1/g'
&VARIABLE = 1