sed replace * in url with text in json file

Question

I'm looking to change the value of a key in a json file

Example:

"House":"sample.house.city"

Need to change the word "sample" to something else.

I can do this with:

sed -i 's|sample.house.city|town-home.house.city|g' file.json

but there is no guarantee that "sample" is going to be the same every time.

I've tried:

sed -i 's|*.house.city|town-home.house.city|g' file.json

but it doesn't change.

Also tried:

sed -i 's|"*.house.city"|"town-home.house.city"|g' file.json

but that ends up like:

"sample"town-home.house.city"

Any recommendations on how to do this correctly?

Answer 1

Explanation

• 1st Capturing Group (\w+)

  • \w matches any word character (equivalent to [a-zA-Z0-9_])
  • + matches the previous token between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)

• 2nd Capturing Group (.house.city)

  • \. matches the character .
  • house matches the characters house literally (case sensitive)
  • \. matches the character .
  • city matches the characters city literally (case sensitive)

• Global pattern flags

  • g modifier: global. All matches (don't return after first match)

• \2 replace with the 2nd Captured Group (.house.city)

---

$ sed -E 's/(\w+)(\.house\.city)/town-home\2/g' <<< '"House":"sample.house.city"'

"House":"town-home.house.city"

$ sed -iE 's/(\w+)(\.house\.city)/town-home\2/g' file.json