Let's say I have input:
/a/b/c/d/e/
/a/b/c/d/e
a/b/c/d/e/
a/b/c/d/e
I'd like to replace all / that are not at the edges with + so the output is:
/a+b+c+d+e/
/a+b+c+d+e
a+b+c+d+e/
a+b+c+d+e
I've tried this command:
sed -e "s#\(.\)/\(.\)#\1+\2#g"
which is close but not quite:
/a+b/c+d/e/
/a+b/c+d/e
a+b/c+d/e/
a+b/c+d/e
presumably because the \(.\) overlap between successive / characters.
I don't believe sed has a null match operator for beginning or end of line. So, how is this done?
You can translate all slashes to + and then replace + (at the beginning or at the end) with a slash:
sed 'y/\//+/;s/^+\|+$/\//g;'
or if the OR operator isn't available:
sed 'y/\//+/;s/^+/\//;s/+$/\//;'
better if you change the delimiter to avoid to escape all literal slashes:
sed 'y~/~+~;s~^+\|+$~/~g;'
or if the OR operator isn't available:
sed 'y~/~+~;s~^+~/~;s~+$~/~;'
(where ^ is an anchor for the start of the line and $ for the end)
Other way: you can protect the slashes you want to preserve using a placeholder:
sed 's~^/~{`%{~;s~/$~{`%{~;y~/~+~;s~{`%{~/~g;'
If you have perl you can use lookarounds for this:
perl -pe 's~(?<!^)/(?!$)~+~g' file
Output:
/a+b+c+d+e/
/a+b+c+d+e
a+b+c+d+e/
a+b+c+d+e
Otherwise you can use this sed with 2 substitutes:
sed -r 's~(.)/(.)~\1+\2~g; s~(.)/(.)~\1+\2~g' file
Or this sed with labeling and looping:
sed -r ':a;s|(.)/(.)|\1+\2|g;ta' file
Here is a sed command that gives your output:
sed -r 's=(.)/\b=\1+=g;' file
usually / is uses as separator for the s command, but here we use =
the / is matched where there is something (.) before it and and we are at a word boundary
initially I tried (.)/(.) but that did not work:
The second dot was consumed and the next match would only start after it,
i.e. in x/y/< the second match would only see /z and not y/z
with \b the first match does not consume the y and the second match sees y/
This is the common and extremely useful sed idiom for doing jobs like this:
$ sed 's:a:aA:g; s:^/\|/$:aB:g; s:/:+:g; s:aB:/:g; s:aA:a:g' file
/a+b+c+d+e/
/a+b+c+d+e
a+b+c+d+e/
a+b+c+d+e
The 1st sub changes all as to aA. At that point there is no letter a in the input that is not followed by the letter A (we need to do this first to ensure that after our 2nd sub the only aBs in the input are as a result of that 2nd sub)
The 2nd sub changes all /s at the start or end of a line to aB. At that point the only aBs in the input are where there were originally /s at the start or end of the line.
The 3rd sub changes all remaining /s (i.e. those that were not at the start or end of the line) to +s.
The 4th sub restores the aBs back to the original front/end /s.
The 5th sub restores the aAs back to the original as.
This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed ':a;s/\([^\/]\)\/\([^\/]\)/\1+\2/g;ta' file
Or visually easier:
sed -r ':a;s#([^/])/([^/])#\1+\2#g;ta' file
It is really the same regexp twice:
sed 's/\([^\/]\)\/\([^\/]\)/\1+\2/g;s/\([^\/]\)\/\([^\/]\)/\1+\2/g' file
Related
I would like to sed to find and replace every occurrence of - with _ but only before the first occurrence of = on every line.
Here is a dataset to work with:
ke-y_0-1="foo"
key_two="bar"
key_03-three="baz-jazz-mazz"
key-="rax_foo"
key-05-five="craz-"
In the end the dataset should look like this:
ke_y_0_1="foo"
key_two="bar"
key_03_three="baz-jazz-mazz"
key_="rax_foo"
key_05_five="craz-"
I found this regex will match properly.
\-(?=.*=)
However the regex uses positive lookaheads and it appears that sed (even with -E, -e or -r) dose not know how to work with positive lookaheads.
I tried the following but keep getting Invalid preceding regular expression
cat dataset.txt | sed -r "s/-(?=.*=)/_/g"
Is it possible to convert this in a usable way with sed?
Note, I do not want to use perl. However I am open to awk.
You can use
sed ':a;s/^\([^=]*\)-/\1_/;ta' file
See the online demo:
#!/bin/bash
s='ke-y_0-1="foo"
key_two="bar"
key_03-three="baz-jazz-mazz"
key-="rax_foo"
key-05-five="craz-"'
sed ':a; s/^\([^=]*\)-/\1_/;ta' <<< "$s"
Output:
ke_y_0_1="foo"
key_two="bar"
key_03_three="baz-jazz-mazz"
key_="rax_foo"
key_05_five="craz-"
Details:
:a - setting a label named a
s/^\([^=]*\)-/\1_/ - find any zero or more chars other than a = char from the start of string (while capturing into Group 1 (\1)) and then matches a - char, and replaces with Group 1 value (\1) and a _ (that replaces the found - char)
ta - jump to lable a location upon successful replacement. Else, stop.
You might also use awk setting the field separator to = and replace all - with _ for the first field.
To print only the replaced lines:
awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="="}gsub("-", "_", $1)' file
Output
ke_y_0_1="foo"
key_03_three="baz-jazz-mazz"
key_="rax_foo"
key_05_five="craz-"
If you want to print all lines:
awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="="}{gsub("-", "_", $1);print}' file
I have a file foo.properties with contents like
foo=bar
# another property
test=true
allNames=alpha:.02,beta:0.25,ph:0.03,delta:1.0,gamma:.5
In my script, I need to replace whatever value is against ph (The current value is unknown to the bash script) and change it to 0.5. So the the file should look like
foo=bar
# another property
test=true
allNames=alpha:.02,beta:0.25,ph:0.5,delta:1.0,gamma:.5
I know it can be easily done if the current value is known by using
sed "s/\,ph\:0.03\,/\,ph\:0.5\,/" foo.properties
But in my case, I have to actually read the contents against allNames and search for the value and then replace within a for loop. Rest all is taken care of but I can't figure out the sed/perl command for this.
I tried using sed "s/\,ph\:.*\,/\,ph\:0.5\,/" foo.properties and some variations but it didn't work.
A simpler sed solution:
sed -E 's/([=,]ph:)[0-9.]+/\10.5/g' file
foo=bar
# another property
test=true
allNames=alpha:.02,beta:0.25,ph:0.5,delta:1.0,gamma:.5
Here we match ([=,]ph:) (i.e. , or = followed by ph:) and capture in group #1. This should be followed by 1+ of [0-9.] character to natch any number. In replacement we put \1 back with 0.5
With your shown samples, please try following awk code.
awk -v new_val="0.5" '
match($0,/,ph:[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)?/){
val=substr($0,RSTART+1,RLENGTH-1)
sub(/:.*/,":",val)
print substr($0,1,RSTART) val new_val substr($0,RSTART+RLENGTH)
next
}
1
' Input_file
Detailed Explanation: Creating awk's variable named new_val which contains new value which needs to put in. In main program of awk using match function of awk to match ,ph:[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)? regex in each line, if a match of regex is found then storing that matched value into variable val. Then substituting everything from : to till end of value in val variable with : here. Then printing values as pre requirement of OP(values before matched regex value with val(edited matched value in regex) with new value and rest of line), using next will avoid going further and by mentioning 1 printing rest other lines which are NOT having a matched value in it.
2nd solution: Using sub function of awk.
awk -v newVal="0.5" '/^allNames=/{sub(/,ph:[^,]*/,",ph:"newVal)} 1' Input_file
Would you please try a perl solution:
perl -pe '
s/(?<=\bph:)[\d.]+(?=,|$)/0.5/;
' foo.properties
The -pe option makes perl to read the input line by line, perform
the operation, then print it as sed does.
The regex (?<=\bph:) is a zero-length lookbehind which matches
the string ph: preceded by a word boundary.
The regex [\d.]+ will match a decimal number.
The regex (?=,|$) is a zero-length lookahead which matches
a comma or the end of the string.
As the lookbehind and the lookahead has zero length, they are not
substituted by the s/../../ operator.
[Edit]
As Dave Cross comments, the lookahead (?=,|$) is unnecessary as long as the input file is correctly formatted.
Works with decimal place or not, or no value, anywhere in the line.
sed -E 's/(^|[^-_[:alnum:]])ph:[0-9]*(.[0-9]+)?/ph:0.5/g'
Or possibly:
sed -E 's/(^|[=,[:space:]])ph:[0-9]+(.[0-9]+)?/ph:0.5/g'
The top one uses "not other naming characters" to describe the character immediately before a name, the bottom one uses delimiter characters (you could add more characters to either). The purpose is to avoid clashing with other_ph or autograph.
Here you go
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
print "\nPerl Starting ... \n\n";
while (my $recordLine =<DATA>)
{
chomp($recordLine);
if (index($recordLine, "ph:") != -1)
{
$recordLine =~ s/ph:.*?,/ph:0.5,/g;
print "recordLine: $recordLine ...\n";
}
}
print "\nPerl End ... \n\n";
__DATA__
foo=bar
# another property
test=true
allNames=alpha:.02,beta:0.25,ph:0.03,delta:1.0,gamma:.5
output:
Perl Starting ...
recordLine: allNames=alpha:.02,beta:0.25,ph:0.5,delta:1.0,gamma:.5 ...
Perl End ...
Using any sed in any shell on every Unix box (the other sed solutions posted that use sed -E require GNU or BSD seds):
a) if ph: is never the first tag in the allNames list (as shown in your sample input):
$ sed 's/\(,ph:\)[^,]*/\10.5/' foo.properties
foo=bar
# another property
test=true
allNames=alpha:.02,beta:0.25,ph:0.5,delta:1.0,gamma:.5
b) or if it can be first:
$ sed 's/\([,=]ph:\)[^,]*/\10.5/' foo.properties
foo=bar
# another property
test=true
allNames=alpha:.02,beta:0.25,ph:0.5,delta:1.0,gamma:.5
Basically, I want to transform ./foo/bar to ./foo/bar/bar. I initially tried sed but the regex I came up with uses lookaround ((?<=s\/)(.*)) or the \K escape sequence (.*\/\K.*), which sed does not support.
For the general case of "how do I append /name to /path/to/name", you can use parameter expansion:
$ var='./foo/bar'
$ echo "$var/${var##*/}"
./foo/bar/bar
${var##*/} expands to the value of $var with the longest possible match of */ (anything ending with a slash) removed from its beginning.
If you have a file with one of these entries per line, you could do something like this with sed:
$ cat infile
./foo/bar
./foo/bar/baz
./path/to/file
$ sed 's/\([^/]*\)$/\1\/\1/' infile
./foo/bar/bar
./foo/bar/baz/baz
./path/to/file/file
This captures everything after the last / on each line and appends a slash and the captured sequence to the end of the line.
I have a ";" delimited file:
aa;;;;aa
rgg;;;;fdg
aff;sfg;;;fasg
sfaf;sdfas;;;
ASFGF;;;;fasg
QFA;DSGS;;DSFAG;fagf
I'd like to process it replacing the missing value with a \N .
The result should be:
aa;\N;\N;\N;aa
rgg;\N;\N;\N;fdg
aff;sfg;\N;\N;fasg
sfaf;sdfas;\N;\N;\N
ASFGF;\N;\N;\N;fasg
QFA;DSGS;\N;DSFAG;fagf
I'm trying to do it with a sed script:
sed "s/;\(;\)/;\\N\1/g" file1.txt >file2.txt
But what I get is
aa;\N;;\N;aa
rgg;\N;;\N;fdg
aff;sfg;\N;;fasg
sfaf;sdfas;\N;;
ASFGF;\N;;\N;fasg
QFA;DSGS;\N;DSFAG;fagf
You don't need to enclose the second semicolon in parentheses just to use it as \1 in the replacement string. You can use ; in the replacement string:
sed 's/;;/;\\N;/g'
As you noticed, when it finds a pair of semicolons it replaces it with the desired string then skips over it, not reading the second semicolon again and this makes it insert \N after every two semicolons.
A solution is to use positive lookaheads; the regex is /;(?=;)/ but sed doesn't support them.
But it's possible to solve the problem using sed in a simple manner: duplicate the search command; the first command replaces the odd appearances of ;; with ;\N, the second one takes care of the even appearances. The final result is the one you need.
The command is as simple as:
sed 's/;;/;\\N;/g;s/;;/;\\N;/g'
It duplicates the previous command and uses the ; between g and s to separe them. Alternatively you can use the -e command line option once for each search expression:
sed -e 's/;;/;\\N;/g' -e 's/;;/;\\N;/g'
Update:
The OP asks in a comment "What if my file have 100 columns?"
Let's try and see if it works:
$ echo "0;1;;2;;;3;;;;4;;;;;5;;;;;;6;;;;;;;" | sed 's/;;/;\\N;/g;s/;;/;\\N;/g'
0;1;\N;2;\N;\N;3;\N;\N;\N;4;\N;\N;\N;\N;5;\N;\N;\N;\N;\N;6;\N;\N;\N;\N;\N;\N;
Look, ma! It works!
:-)
Update #2
I ignored the fact that the question doesn't ask to replace ;; with something else but to replace the empty/missing values in a file that uses ; to separate the columns. Accordingly, my expression doesn't fix the missing value when it occurs at the beginning or at the end of the line.
As the OP kindly added in a comment, the complete sed command is:
sed 's/;;/;\\N;/g;s/;;/;\\N;/g;s/^;/\\N;/g;s/;$/;\\N/g'
or (for readability):
sed -e 's/;;/;\\N;/g;' -e 's/;;/;\\N;/g;' -e 's/^;/\\N;/g' -e 's/;$/;\\N/g'
The two additional steps replace ';' when they found it at beginning or at the end of line.
You can use this sed command with 2 s (substitute) commands:
sed 's/;;/;\\N;/g; s/;;/;\\N;/g;' file
aa;\N;\N;\N;aa
rgg;\N;\N;\N;fdg
aff;sfg;\N;\N;fasg
sfaf;sdfas;\N;\N;
ASFGF;\N;\N;\N;fasg
QFA;DSGS;\N;DSFAG;fagf
Or using lookarounds regex in a perl command:
perl -pe 's/(?<=;)(?=;)/\\N/g' file
aa;\N;\N;\N;aa
rgg;\N;\N;\N;fdg
aff;sfg;\N;\N;fasg
sfaf;sdfas;\N;\N;
ASFGF;\N;\N;\N;fasg
QFA;DSGS;\N;DSFAG;fagf
The main problem is that you can't use several times the same characters for a single replacement:
s/;;/..../g: The second ; can't be reused for the next match in a string like ;;;
If you want to do it with sed without to use a Perl-like regex mode, you can use a loop with the conditional command t:
sed ':a;s/;;/;\\N;/g;ta;' file
:a defines a label "a", ta go to this label only if something has been replaced.
For the ; at the end of the line (and to deal with eventual trailing whitespaces):
sed ':a;s/;;/;\\N;/g;ta; s/;[ \t\r]*$/;\\N/1' file
this awk one-liner will give you what you want:
awk -F';' -v OFS=';' '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)if($i=="")$i="\\N"}7' file
if you really want the line: sfaf;sdfas;\N;\N;\N , this line works for you:
awk -F';' -v OFS=';' '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)if($i=="")$i="\\N";sub(/;$/,";\\N")}7' file
sed 's/;/;\\N/g;s/;\\N\([^;]\)/;\1/g;s/;[[:blank:]]*$/;\\N/' YourFile
non recursive, onliner, posix compliant
Concept:
change all ;
put back unmatched one
add the special case of last ; with eventually space before the end of line
This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed -r ':;s/^(;)|(;);|(;)$/\2\3\\N\1\2/g;t' file
There are 4 senarios in which an empty field may occur: at the start of a record, between 2 field delimiters, an empty field following an empty field and at the end of a record. Alternation can be employed to cater for senarios 1,2 and 4 and senario 3 can be catered for by a second pass using a loop (:;...;t). Multiple senarios can be replaced in both passes using the g flag.
Suppose I have 'abbc' string and I want to replace:
ab -> bc
bc -> ab
If I try two replaces the result is not what I want:
echo 'abbc' | sed 's/ab/bc/g;s/bc/ab/g'
abab
So what sed command can I use to replace like below?
echo abbc | sed SED_COMMAND
bcab
EDIT:
Actually the text could have more than 2 patterns and I don't know how many replaces I will need. Since there was a answer saying that sed is a stream editor and its replaces are greedily I think that I will need to use some script language for that.
Maybe something like this:
sed 's/ab/~~/g; s/bc/ab/g; s/~~/bc/g'
Replace ~ with a character that you know won't be in the string.
I always use multiple statements with "-e"
$ sed -e 's:AND:\n&:g' -e 's:GROUP BY:\n&:g' -e 's:UNION:\n&:g' -e 's:FROM:\n&:g' file > readable.sql
This will append a '\n' before all AND's, GROUP BY's, UNION's and FROM's, whereas '&' means the matched string and '\n&' means you want to replace the matched string with an '\n' before the 'matched'
sed is a stream editor. It searches and replaces greedily. The only way to do what you asked for is using an intermediate substitution pattern and changing it back in the end.
echo 'abcd' | sed -e 's/ab/xy/;s/cd/ab/;s/xy/cd/'
Here is a variation on ooga's answer that works for multiple search and replace pairs without having to check how values might be reused:
sed -i '
s/\bAB\b/________BC________/g
s/\bBC\b/________CD________/g
s/________//g
' path_to_your_files/*.txt
Here is an example:
before:
some text AB some more text "BC" and more text.
after:
some text BC some more text "CD" and more text.
Note that \b denotes word boundaries, which is what prevents the ________ from interfering with the search (I'm using GNU sed 4.2.2 on Ubuntu). If you are not using a word boundary search, then this technique may not work.
Also note that this gives the same results as removing the s/________//g and appending && sed -i 's/________//g' path_to_your_files/*.txt to the end of the command, but doesn't require specifying the path twice.
A general variation on this would be to use \x0 or _\x0_ in place of ________ if you know that no nulls appear in your files, as jthill suggested.
Here is an excerpt from the SED manual:
-e script
--expression=script
Add the commands in script to the set of commands to be run while processing the input.
Prepend each substitution with -e option and collect them together. The example that works for me follows:
sed < ../.env-turret.dist \
-e "s/{{ name }}/turret$TURRETS_COUNT_INIT/g" \
-e "s/{{ account }}/$CFW_ACCOUNT_ID/g" > ./.env.dist
This example also shows how to use environment variables in your substitutions.
This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed -r '1{x;s/^/:abbc:bcab/;x};G;s/^/\n/;:a;/\n\n/{P;d};s/\n(ab|bc)(.*\n.*:(\1)([^:]*))/\4\n\2/;ta;s/\n(.)/\1\n/;ta' file
This uses a lookup table which is prepared and held in the hold space (HS) and then appended to each line. An unique marker (in this case \n) is prepended to the start of the line and used as a method to bump-along the search throughout the length of the line. Once the marker reaches the end of the line the process is finished and is printed out the lookup table and markers being discarded.
N.B. The lookup table is prepped at the very start and a second unique marker (in this case :) chosen so as not to clash with the substitution strings.
With some comments:
sed -r '
# initialize hold with :abbc:bcab
1 {
x
s/^/:abbc:bcab/
x
}
G # append hold to patt (after a \n)
s/^/\n/ # prepend a \n
:a
/\n\n/ {
P # print patt up to first \n
d # delete patt & start next cycle
}
s/\n(ab|bc)(.*\n.*:(\1)([^:]*))/\4\n\2/
ta # goto a if sub occurred
s/\n(.)/\1\n/ # move one char past the first \n
ta # goto a if sub occurred
'
The table works like this:
** ** replacement
:abbc:bcab
** ** pattern
Tcl has a builtin for this
$ tclsh
% string map {ab bc bc ab} abbc
bcab
This works by walking the string a character at a time doing string comparisons starting at the current position.
In perl:
perl -E '
sub string_map {
my ($str, %map) = #_;
my $i = 0;
while ($i < length $str) {
KEYS:
for my $key (keys %map) {
if (substr($str, $i, length $key) eq $key) {
substr($str, $i, length $key) = $map{$key};
$i += length($map{$key}) - 1;
last KEYS;
}
}
$i++;
}
return $str;
}
say string_map("abbc", "ab"=>"bc", "bc"=>"ab");
'
bcab
May be a simpler approach for single pattern occurrence you can try as below:
echo 'abbc' | sed 's/ab/bc/;s/bc/ab/2'
My output:
~# echo 'abbc' | sed 's/ab/bc/;s/bc/ab/2'
bcab
For multiple occurrences of pattern:
sed 's/\(ab\)\(bc\)/\2\1/g'
Example
~# cat try.txt
abbc abbc abbc
bcab abbc bcab
abbc abbc bcab
~# sed 's/\(ab\)\(bc\)/\2\1/g' try.txt
bcab bcab bcab
bcab bcab bcab
bcab bcab bcab
Hope this helps !!
echo "C:\Users\San.Tan\My Folder\project1" | sed -e 's/C:\\/mnt\/c\//;s/\\/\//g'
replaces
C:\Users\San.Tan\My Folder\project1
to
mnt/c/Users/San.Tan/My Folder/project1
in case someone needs to replace windows paths to Windows Subsystem for Linux(WSL) paths
If replacing the string by Variable, the solution doesn't work.
The sed command need to be in double quotes instead on single quote.
#sed -e "s/#replacevarServiceName#/$varServiceName/g" -e "s/#replacevarImageTag#/$varImageTag/g" deployment.yaml
Here is an awk based on oogas sed
echo 'abbc' | awk '{gsub(/ab/,"xy");gsub(/bc/,"ab");gsub(/xy/,"bc")}1'
bcab
I believe this should solve your problem. I may be missing a few edge cases, please comment if you notice one.
You need a way to exclude previous substitutions from future patterns, which really means making outputs distinguishable, as well as excluding these outputs from your searches, and finally making outputs indistinguishable again. This is very similar to the quoting/escaping process, so I'll draw from it.
s/\\/\\\\/g escapes all existing backslashes
s/ab/\\b\\c/g substitutes raw ab for escaped bc
s/bc/\\a\\b/g substitutes raw bc for escaped ab
s/\\\(.\)/\1/g substitutes all escaped X for raw X
I have not accounted for backslashes in ab or bc, but intuitively, I would escape the search and replace terms the same way - \ now matches \\, and substituted \\ will appear as \.
Until now I have been using backslashes as the escape character, but it's not necessarily the best choice. Almost any character should work, but be careful with the characters that need escaping in your environment, sed, etc. depending on how you intend to use the results.
Every answer posted thus far seems to agree with the statement by kuriouscoder made in his above post:
The only way to do what you asked for is using an intermediate
substitution pattern and changing it back in the end
If you are going to do this, however, and your usage might involve more than some trivial string (maybe you are filtering data, etc.), the best character to use with sed is a newline. This is because since sed is 100% line-based, a newline is the one-and-only character you are guaranteed to never receive when a new line is fetched (forget about GNU multi-line extensions for this discussion).
To start with, here is a very simple approach to solving your problem using newlines as an intermediate delimiter:
echo "abbc" | sed -E $'s/ab|bc/\\\n&/g; s/\\nab/bc/g; s/\\nbc/ab/g'
With simplicity comes some trade-offs... if you had more than a couple variables, like in your original post, you have to type them all twice. Performance might be able to be improved a little bit, too.
It gets pretty nasty to do much beyond this using sed. Even with some of the more advanced features like branching control and the hold buffer (which is really weak IMO), your options are pretty limited.
Just for fun, I came up with this one alternative, but I don't think I would have any particular reason to recommend it over the one from earlier in this post... You have to essentially make your own "convention" for delimiters if you really want to do anything fancy in sed. This is way-overkill for your original post, but it might spark some ideas for people who come across this post and have more complicated situations.
My convention below was: use multiple newlines to "protect" or "unprotect" the part of the line you're working on. One newline denotes a word boundary. Two newlines denote alternatives for a candidate replacement. I don't replace right away, but rather list the candidate replacement on the next line. Three newlines means that a value is "locked-in", like your original post way trying to do with ab and bc. After that point, further replacements will be undone, because they are protected by the newlines. A little complicated if I don't say so myself... ! sed isn't really meant for much more than the basics.
# Newlines
NL=$'\\\n'
NOT_NL=$'[\x01-\x09\x0B-\x7F]'
# Delimiters
PRE="${NL}${NL}&${NL}"
POST="${NL}${NL}"
# Un-doer (if a request was made to modify a locked-in value)
tidy="s/(\\n\\n\\n${NOT_NL}*)\\n\\n(${NOT_NL}*)\\n(${NOT_NL}*)\\n\\n/\\1\\2/g; "
# Locker-inner (three newlines means "do not touch")
tidy+="s/(\\n\\n)${NOT_NL}*\\n(${NOT_NL}*\\n\\n)/\\1${NL}\\2/g;"
# Finalizer (remove newlines)
final="s/\\n//g"
# Input/Commands
input="abbc"
cmd1="s/(ab)/${PRE}bc${POST}/g"
cmd2="s/(bc)/${PRE}ab${POST}/g"
# Execute
echo ${input} | sed -E "${cmd1}; ${tidy}; ${cmd2}; ${tidy}; ${final}"