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I have a request to replace the pattern A.*D with E.*E. however my string have multiple combinations to meet this pattern, like bAcDAccDAccccD. if I just use the normal way to replace, I can't get my expected result, i.e., bEcEEccEEccccE:

echo 'bAcDAccDAccccD'|sed 's/A\(.*\)D/E\1E/g' --> bEcDAccDAccccE.

How to solve such problem?

a4194304
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1 Answers1

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* is greedy quantifier(See Greedy vs. Reluctant vs. Possessive Quantifiers). It will try to match as much as possible

A simple workaround for given case is

$ echo 'bAcDAccDAccccD' | sed 's/A\([^D]*\)D/E\1E/g'
bEcEEccEEccccE

[^D]* will match only non D characters, whereas .* will match any character, including D

Sundeep
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