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From: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: sed 's/foobar/$string/g'.... can't do this?
Message-ID: <8915@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 1 Feb 91 20:26:21 GMT
References: <1991Jan17.003856.469@unicorn.cc.wwu.edu> <135@edi386.UUCP> <1991Jan21.124531.27867@siesoft.co.uk> <7ejp01gY0c.900@amdahl.uts.a <1069@mwtech.UUCP>
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Reply-To: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Distribution: comp
Organization: VU Dept. of Computer Science, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Lines: 38

In article <1069@mwtech.UUCP>,
	martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) writes:
)[...]
)One loophole still remains even in Geoff's solution: embedded newlines in
)$string. [...]

Here's an example that deals with everything, as far as I know.
Enjoy.

--------------------cut here--------------------
#!/bin/sh
# sed(1) safe substitute example

newline='
'

string='this string contains an embedded newline,
a backslash, a slash, an ampersand and 2 terminating newlines: \ / &

'

nl=

case $string in
*$newline)
	nl=$newline
esac

Xstring=`sed -e 's-[/&\\\\]-\\\\&-g' -e '$!s/$/\\\\/' <<!
$string
!
`$nl

sed "s/.*/$Xstring/" <<!
hello
!
--
Temporary files like /tmp/sh$$ are an abomination.