I'm trying to run this sed command using Renovate, the tool doesn't really matter I think but I'm getting the following error

"find . -name release-notes.md -type f -exec sh -c 'sed -i '1s#^#some text#' \"$1\"' sh {} \\;",

"stderr":"/bin/sh: 1: Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string\n",

Note that it works fine without the space within the sed expression (some text), meaning that the following works fine

"find . -name release-notes.md -type f -exec sh -c 'sed -i '1s#^#sometext#' \"$1\"' sh {} \\;",

Thanks

CodePudding user response：

In the expression sh -c 'sed -i '1s#^#some text#' \"$1\"', the second single quote (the one immediately before "1s") terminates the opening quote and the string 1s#^#some text# is unquoted. It's very common to see the script argument to sed quoted with single quotes, but it's not at all necessary. In your case, the 2 simplest solutions are:

sh -c 'sed -i 1s#^#some\ text# \"$1\"'

and

sh -c 'sed -i \"1s#^#some text#\" \"$1\"'

But you could simplify everything by avoiding the unnecessary layer of quoting and doing:

-exec sed -i -e '1s#^#some text#' {} \;

The -e isn't strictly necessary, but the non-standard -i wants a backup suffix in some versions, and I find it cleaner to explicitly use -e to avoid confusion.

CodePudding user response：

find . -name release-notes.md -type f -exec sed -i '1s/\(some text\)/\"\1\"/' {} \;

Using a capture group is often easier then a look behind (or ahead). The above code worked for me. Unsure why you calls sh, -exec will use the default shell, and that should work? unless you have an edge case?