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From: Markus Elfring <Markus.Elfring@web.de>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer,comp.programming
Subject: Escaping of line breaks for text replacement
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2014 14:00:52 +0100
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Hello,

I get the following result if I try out such a command on my openSUSE system.

elfring@Sonne:~> $SHELL --version && sed --version && LINE='echo ---' && $LINE \
&& DRAFT='template1.txt' && cat $DRAFT && $LINE \
&& INPUT='replacement1.txt' && cat $INPUT && XY=$(< $INPUT) && $LINE \
&& LANG=C sed "s/# placeholder/$XY/" $DRAFT
GNU bash, Version 4.2.45(1)-release (x86_64-suse-linux-gnu)
   ...
sed (GNU sed) 4.2.2
   ...
---
+++++++++++++
# placeholder
*************
---
ABC
XYZ
---
sed: -e expression #1, char 19: unterminated `s' command


I guess that the shown error message is an indication that I should add a bit of
escaping to the content of the variable "XY" which I inserted previously. I have
tried to achieve this with shell pattern substitution.

elfring@Sonne:~> XY=$(< $INPUT) && XY=${XY//\\\n/./} && echo $XY
ABC XYZ


I wonder why I do not get this approach to work so far with some additional
backslashes here. How should newlines be escaped for this purpose?

Would you like to share any further ideas?

Regards,
Markus