I'm trying to write a script to swap out text in a file:
sed s/foo/bar/g myFile.txt > myFile.txt.updated
mv myFile.txt.updated myFile.txt
I evoke the sed program, which swaps out text in myFile.txt and redirects the changed lines of text to a second file. mv then moves .updated txt file to myFile.txt, overwriting it. That command works in the shell.
I wrote:
#!/bin/sh
#First, I set up some descriptive variables for the arguments
initialString="$1"
shift
desiredChange="$1"
shift
document="$1"
#Then, I evoke sed on these (more readable) parameters
updatedDocument=`sed s/$initialString/$desiredChange/g $document`
#I want to make sure that was done properly
echo updated document is $updatedDocument
#then I move the output in to the new text document
mv $updatedDocument $document
I get the error:
mv: target `myFile.txt' is not a directory
I understand that it thinks my new file's name is the first word of the string that was sed's output. I don't know how to correct that. I've been trying since 7am and every quotation, creating a temporary file to store the output in (disastrous results), IFS...everything so far gives me more and more unhelpful errors. I need to clear my head and I need your help. How can I fix this?