Find and replace using regex in sed - regex

I want to replace
# Bulk Delete #
with
=== Bulk Delete ===
I am using the following sed command.
sed "s/#\([^#]*\)#/===\1===/g" filename
It works, but it also replaces
### Translation
with
======# Translation
How to prevent it and make it work in both mac and ubuntu?

The easiest way is to match the blanks too:
sed 's/# \([^#]*\) #/=== \1 ===/g' filename
Another way is to require multiple (one or more) non-hashes between the two hashes:
sed 's/#\([^#]\{1,\}\)#/===\1===/g' filename
The \{n,m\} is a quantifier notation that requires at least n occurrences and at most m occurrences of the pattern immediately before it, so it is generalization of the ?, * and + metacharacters (which can be represented by \{0,1\}, \{0,\}, and \{1,\} respectively). If m is missing, it means any number not smaller than n; if n is missing, it means any number not larger than m, and so is equivalent to 0. In my example, I'm using it as the classic, portable (to prehistoric versions of sed off Linux and Mac OS X) version of +.
Another way of writing that is:
sed 's/#\([^#][^#]*\)#/===\1===/g' filename
And you can combine the ideas, of course:
sed 's/# \([^#][^#]*\) #/=== \1 ===/g' filename
sed 's/# \([^#]\{1,\}\) #/=== \1 ===/g' filename

You could use + to enforce at least one character which is not a #
Since the sed in OSX does not support the enhanced regular expression syntax like + by default, you need to pass the -E flag to sed. And the good news is -E flag works well on *nix systems too. When using the -E flag, you can skip escaping the special regex characters like +, (, etc.
sed -E "s/#([^#]+)#/===\1===/g" filename

Related

GNU sed regex to fix mySQL db inserts for SQLite

I am trying to translate a huge mySQL database dump file from mySQL syntax into SQLite syntax.
At https://regex101.com/ I have successfully created a ECMAScript flavor regex to turn something like:
,'foo\'s bar!',
into:
,"foo\'s bar!"
with this regular expression:
/,'([^']+)\\'([^']+)',/"$1\\'$2"/g
testing against this short file:
(1058,'gpl5q0x51349lmdq3e0ijm4k9b6n','Henry\'s_1.csv','text/csv','{\"identified\":true,\"analyzed\":true}',33854,'mUVk0/XGX+afIpkrqBm7LQ==','2021-01-06 03:07:23'),
(1059,'xzj8mivsenkakkrurfjytxjsaj1h','Henry\'s_2.csv','text/csv','{\"identified\":true,\"analyzed\":true}',33555,'KfRYqfAWtSIYXZ6oQZyYbA==','2021-01-06 03:07:23'),
Resulting in:
(1058,'gpl5q0x51349lmdq3e0ijm4k9b6n'"Henry\'s_1.csv"'text/csv','{\"identified\":true,\"analyzed\":true}',33854,'mUVk0/XGX+afIpkrqBm7LQ==','2021-01-06 03:07:23'),
(1059,'xzj8mivsenkakkrurfjytxjsaj1h'"Henry\'s_2.csv"'text/csv','{\"identified\":true,\"analyzed\":true}',33555,'KfRYqfAWtSIYXZ6oQZyYbA==','2021-01-06 03:07:23'),
but for the life of me I cannot translate this into a GNU sed flavor regex.
For example, this command does not make any substitutions in the output:
sed -r s/,'([^']+)\\'([^']+)',/"$1\\'$2"/g <test.sql
...
sed -r s/,'([^']+)\\'([^']+)',/"\1\\'\2"/g <test.sql: doesn't work either.
I have looked for a regex tool online that translates between different flavors of regex but cannot find one that works on GNU sed (shipped with GIT: sed (GNU sed) 4.8). PCRE seems to be close to what sed has but that doesn't work. I tried perl as well, no luck.
Anyone know a regex expression that works or a translator tool that works?
I am just about ready to write a nodejs program to do this for me.
Also, for extra credit, how can I write a sed script to handle any number of escaped quotes within a quoted string? I have that issue to deal with as well in my DB dump file.
Examples:
'foo\'-bar' // on instance
'foo\'and\'bar' // two instances
'foo\'and\'bar\'s on the deck' // three instances
and so on...
Thanks!
You can use
sed -E "s/,'([^']+)\\\\'([^']+)',/"'"'"\\1\\\\'\\2"'"'/g test.sql
The "s/,'([^']+)\\\\'([^']+)',/"'"'"\\1\\\\'\\2"'"'/g consists of
"s/,'([^']+)\\\\'([^']+)',/" - a s/,'([^']+)\\'([^']+)',/ part (inside double quotes, so backslashes need doubling)
'"' - a " char (inside single quotes)
"\\1\\\\'\\2" - \1\\'\2 pattern (inside double quotes, so backslashes are doubled)
'"' - a " char (inside single quotes)
/g - the global flag (no need quoting here).
First look at your command
sed -r s/,'([^']+)\\'([^']+)',/"\1\\'\2"/g test.sql
I prefer writing the whole sed command in single quotes. When you need a single quote, you must close the string ('), use an escaped single quote (\') and open the next string with a ', all joined: '\''.
I also added two , characters.
sed -r 's/,'\''([^'\'']+)\\'\''([^'\'']+)'\'',/,"\1\\'\''\2",/g' test.sql
# Shorter
sed -r 's/,'\''([^'\'']+\\'\''[^'\'']+)'\'',/,"\1",/g' test.sql
# Using another way to write the single quotes, with the hex notation
sed -r 's/,\x27([^\x27]+\\\x27[^\x27]+)\x27,/,"\1",/g' test.sql
This works for simple cases, not for 'foo\'and\'bar\'s on the deck'.
I think you want to replace the quotes in the simple fields too.
Suppose you want to transform
(1058,'gpl5q0x51349lmdq3e0ijm4k9b6n','Henry\'s_1.csv','text/csv','{\"identified\":true,\"analyzed\":true}',33854,'mUVk0/XGX+afIpkrqBm7LQ==','2021-01-06 03:07:23'),
(1059,'xzj8mivsenkakkrurfjytxjsaj1h','Henry\'s_2.csv','text/csv','{\"identified\":true,\"analyzed\":true}',33555,'KfRYqfAWtSIYXZ6oQZyYbA==','2021-01-06 03:07:23'),
(2000,'extra credit from question','foo\'and\'bar\'s on the deck','text/csv','{\"identified\":true,\"analyzed\":true}',33999,'KgSBFstbdthdsssssstvbA==','2022-01-02 13:07:23'),
into
(1058,"gpl5q0x51349lmdq3e0ijm4k9b6n","Henry\'s_1.csv","text/csv","{\"identified\":true,\"analyzed\":true}",33854,"mUVk0/XGX+afIpkrqBm7LQ==","2021-01-06 03:07:23"),
(1059,"xzj8mivsenkakkrurfjytxjsaj1h","Henry\'s_2.csv","text/csv","{\"identified\":true,\"analyzed\":true}",33555,"KfRYqfAWtSIYXZ6oQZyYbA==","2021-01-06 03:07:23"),
(2000,"extra credit from question","foo\'and\'bar\'s on the deck","text/csv","{\"identified\":true,\"analyzed\":true}",33999,"KgSBFstbdthdsssssstvbA==","2022-01-02 13:07:23"),
In this answer I don't use the '\'' but the hexadecimal notation \x27.
First "backup" the \' combinations (replace them by an unused character like \r), replace all normal quotes by double quotes and "restore the backup" (change back the \r).
sed 's/\\\x27/\r/g; s/\x27/"/g; s/\r/\\\x27/g' test.sql
# or hex value for double quote "
sed 's/\\\x27/\r/g; s/\x27/\x22/g; s/\r/\\\x27/g' test.sql

Using grep to extract very specific strings from binary file

I have a large binary file. I want to extract certain strings from it and copy them to a new text file.
For example, in:
D-wM-^?^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^Y^#^#^#^#^#^#^#M-lM-FM-MM-[o#^B^#M-lM-FM MM-[o#^B^#^#^#^#^#E7cacscKLrrok9bwC3Z64NTnZM-^G
I want to take the number '7' (after the #^#^#E) and every character after it stopping at the Z ('ignoring the M-^G).
I want to copy this 7cacscKLrrok9bwC3Z64NTnZ to a new file.
There will be multiple such strings in one file. The end will always be denoted by the M- (which I don't want copied). The start will always be denoted by a 7 (which I do want copied).
Unfortunately, my knowledge of grep, sed, etc, does not extend to this level. Can someone please suggest a viable way to achieve this?
cat -v filename | grep [7][A-Z,a-z] will show all strings with a '7' followed by a letter but that's not much.
Thank you.
I've noticed that my requirements are rather more complicated.
(I've performed the correct - I hope - formatting this time). Thanks to 'tshiono' for his (?) answer to the earlier submission.
I want to check the ending of a string and, if it ends in M-, grep another string that follows it (with junk in between). If the string does not end in M-, then I don't want it copied (let alone any other strings).
So what I would like is:
grep -a -Po "7[[:alnum:]]+(?=M-)" file_name and if the ending is M- then grep -a -Po "5x[[:alnum:]]+(?=\^)" file_name to copy the string that starts with 5x and ends with a ^.
In this example:
D-wM-^?^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^Y^#^#^#^#^#^#^#M-lM-FM-MM-[o#^B^#M-lM-FM MM-[o#^B^#^#^#^#^#E7cacscKLrrok9bwC3Z64NTnZM-^GwM-^?^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^Y^#^#^#^#^#^#^#M-lM-FM-MM-[o#^B^#M-lM5x8w09qewqlkcklwnlkewflewfiewjfoewnflwenfwlkfwelk^89038432nowefe
The outcome would be:
7cacscKLrrok9bwC3Z64NTnZ
5x8w09qewqlkcklwnlkewflewfiewjfoewnflwenfwlkfwelk
However, if the ending is not M- (more precisely, if the ending is ^S), then do not try the second grep and do not record anything at all.
In this example:
D-wM-^?^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^Y^#^#^#^#^#^#^#M-lM-FM-MM-[o#^B^#M-lM-FM MM-[o#^B^#^#^#^#^#E7cacscKLrrok9bwC3Z64NTnZ^SGwM-^?^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^Y^#^#^#^#^#^#^#M-lM-FM-MM-[o#^B^#M-lM5x8w09qewqlkcklwnlkewflewfiewjfoewnflwenfwlkfwelk^89038432nowefe
The outcome would be null (nothing copied) as the 7cacs... string ends in ^S.
Is grep the correct tool? Grep a file and if the condition in the grep command is 'yes' then issue a different grep command but if the condition is 'no' then do nothing.
Thanks again.
I have noticed one addition modification.
Can one add an OR command to the second part? Grep if the second string starts with 5x OR 6x?
In the example below, grep -aPo "7[[:alnum:]]+M-.*?5x[[:alnum:]]+\^" filename | grep -aPo "7[[:alnum:]]+(?=M-)|5x[[:alnum:]]+(?=\^)" will extract the strings starting with 7 and the strings starting with 5x.
How can one change the 5x to 5x or 6x?
D-wM-^?^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^Y^#^#^#^#^#^#^#M-lM-FM-MM-[o#^B^#M-lM-FM MM-[o#^B^#^#^#^#^#E7cacscKLrrok9bwC3Z64NTnZM-^GwM-^?^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^Y^#^#^#^#^#^#^#M-lM-FM-MM-[o#^B^#M-lM5x8w09qewqlkcklwnlkewflewfiewjfoewnflwenfwlkfwelk^89038432nowefe
D-wM-^?^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^Y^#^#^#^#^#^#^#M-lM-FM-MM-[o#^B^#M-lM-FM MM-[o#^B^#^#^#^#^#E7AAAAAscKLrrok9bwC3Z64NTnZM-^GwM-^?^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^Y^#^#^#^#^#^#^#M-lM-FM-MM-[o#^B^#M-lM6x8w09qewqlkcklwnlkewflewfiewjfoewnflwenfwlkfwelk^89038432nowefe
In this example, the desired outcome would be:
7cacscKLrrok9bwC3Z64NTnZ
5x8w09qewqlkcklwnlkewflewfiewjfoewnflwenfwlkfwelk
7AAAAAscKLrrok9bwC3Z64NTnZ
6x8w09qewqlkcklwnlkewflewfiewjfoewnflwenfwlkfwelk
UPDATE MARCH 09:
I need to create a series of complex grep (or perl) commands to extract strings from a series of binary files.
I need two strings from the binary file.
The first string will always start with a 1.
The first string will end with a letter or number. The next letter will always be a lower case k. I do not want this k character.
The difficulty is that the ending k will not always be the first k in the string. It might be the first k but it might not.
After the k, there is a second string. The second string will always start with an A or a B.
The ending of the second string will be in one of two forms:
a) it will end with a space then display the first three characters from the first string in lower case followed by a )
b) it will end with a ^K then display the first three characters from the first string in lower case.
For example:
1pppsx9YPar8Rvs75tJYWZq3eo8PgwbckB4m4zT7Yg042KIDYUE82e893hY ppp)
Should be:
1pppsx9YPar8Rvs75tJYWZq3eo8Pgwbc and B4m4zT7Yg042KIDYUE82e893hY - delete the k and the space then ppp.
For example:
1zzzsx9YPkr8Rvs75tJYWZq3eo8PgwbckA2m4zT7Yg042KIDYUE82e893hY^Kzzz
Should be:
1zzzsx9YPkar8Rvs75tJYWZq3eo8Pgwbc and A4m4zT7Yg042KIDYUE82e893hY - delete the second k and the ^Kzzz.
In the second example, we see that the first k is part of the first string. It is the k before the A that breaks up the first and second strings.
I hope there is a super grep expert who can help! Many thanks!
If your grep supports -P option, would you please try:
grep -a -Po "7[[:alnum:]]+(?=M-)" file
The -a option forces grep to read the input as a text file.
The -P option enables the perl-compatible regex.
The -o option tells grep to print only the matched substring(s).
The pattern (?=M-) is a zero-width lookahead assertion (introduced in
Perl) without including it in the result.
Alternatively you can also say with sed:
sed 's/M-/\n/g' file | sed -n 's/.*\(7[[:alnum:]]\+\).*/\1/p'
The first sed command splits the input file into miltiple lines by
replacing the substring M- with a newline.
It has two benefits: it breaks the lines to allow multiple matches with
sed and excludes the unnecessary portion M- from the input.
The next sed command extracts the desired pattern from the input.
It assumes your sed accepts \n in the replacement, which is
a GNU extension (not POSIX compliant). Otherwise please try (in case you are working on bash):
sed 's/M-/\'$'\n''/g' file | sed -n 's/.*\(7[[:alnum:]]\+\).*/\1/p'
[UPDATE]
(The requirement has been updated by the OP and the followings are solutions according to it.)
Let me assume the string which starts with 7 and ends with M- is always followed
by another (no more and no less than one) string which starts with 5x and ends
with ^ (ascii caret character) with junks in between.
Then would you please try the following:
grep -aPo "7[[:alnum:]]+M-.*?5x[[:alnum:]]+\^" file | grep -aPo "7[[:alnum:]]+(?=M-)|5x[[:alnum:]]+(?=\^)"
It executes the task in two steps (two cascaded greps).
The 1st grep narrows down the input data into the candidate substring
which will include the desired two sequences and junks in between.
The regex .*? in between matches any (ascii or binary) characters
except for a newline character.
The trailing ? enables the shortest match
which avoids the overrun due to the greedy nature of regex. The regex is intended to match junks in between.
The 2nd grep includes two regex's merged with a pipe | meaning logical OR.
Then it extracts two desired sequences.
A potential problem of grep solution is that grep is a line oriented command
and cannot include the newline character in the matched string.
If a newline character is included in the junks in between (I'm not sure about the possibility), the above solution will fail.
As a workaround, perl will provide flexible manipulations with binary data.
perl -0777 -ne '
while (/(7[[:alnum:]]+)M-.*?(5x[[:alnum:]]+)\^/sg) {
printf("%s\n%s\n", $1, $2);
}
' file
The regex is mostly same as that of grep because the -P option of grep means
perl-compatible.
It can capture multiple patterns at once in variables $1 and $2 hence just one regex is enough.
The -0777 option to the perl command tells perl to slurp all data
at once.
The s option at the end the regex makes a dot match a newline character.
The g option enables the global (multiple) match.
[UPDATE2]
In order to make the regex match either 5x or 6x, replace 5x with (5|6)x.
Namely:
grep -aPo "7[[:alnum:]]+M-.*?(5|6)x[[:alnum:]]+\^" file | grep -aPo "7[[:alnum:]]+(?=M-)|(5|6)x[[:alnum:]]+(?=\^)"
As mentioned before, the pipe | means OR. The OR operator has the lowest priority in the evaluation, hence you need to enclose them with parens in this case.
If there is a possibility any other number than 5 or 6 may appear, it will be safer to put [[:digit:]] instead, which matches any one digit betweeen 0 and 9:
grep -aPo "7[[:alnum:]]+M-.*?[[:digit:]]x[[:alnum:]]+\^" file | grep -aPo "7[[:alnum:]]+(?=M-)|[[:digit:]]x[[:alnum:]]+(?=\^)"
[UPDATE3]
(Answering the OP's requirement on March 9th)
Let me start with a perl code which regex will be relatively easier
to explain.
perl -0777 -ne 'while (/(1(.{3}).+)k([AB].*)[\013 ]\2/g){print "$1 $3\n"}' file
Output:
1pppsx9YPar8Rvs75tJYWZq3eo8Pgwbc B4m4zT7Yg042KIDYUE82e893hY
1zzzsx9YPkr8Rvs75tJYWZq3eo8Pgwbc A2m4zT7Yg042KIDYUE82e893hY
[Explanation of regex]
(1(.{3}).+)k([AB].*)[\013 ]\2
( start of the 1st capture group referred by $1 later
1 literal "1"
( start of the 2nd capture group referred by \2 later
.{3} a sequence of the identical three characters such as ppp or zzz
) end of the 2nd capture group
.+ followed by any characters with "greedy" match which may include the 1st "k"
) end of the 1st capture group
k literal "k"
( start of the 3rd capture group referred by $3 later
[AB].* the character "A" or "B" followed by any characters
) end of the 3rd capture group
[\013 ] followed by ^K or a whitespace
\2 followed by the capture group 2 previously assigned
When implementing it with grep, we will encounter a limitation of grep.
Although we want to extract multiple patterns from the input file,
the -e option (which can specify multiple search patterns) does not
work with -P option. Then we need to split the regex into two patterns
such as:
grep -Po "(1(.{3}).+)(?=k([AB].*)[\013 ]\2)" file
grep -Po "(1(.{3}).+)k\K([AB].*)(?=[\013 ]\2)" file
And the result will be:
1pppsx9YPar8Rvs75tJYWZq3eo8Pgwbc
1zzzsx9YPkr8Rvs75tJYWZq3eo8Pgwbc
B4m4zT7Yg042KIDYUE82e893hY
A2m4zT7Yg042KIDYUE82e893hY
Please be noted the order of output is not same as the order of appearance in the original file.
Another option will be to introduce ripgrep or rg which is a fast
and versatile version of grep. You may need to install ripgrep with
sudo apt install ripgrep or using other package handling tool.
An advantage of ripgrep is it supports -r (replace) option in which
you can make use of the backreferences:
rg -N -Po "(1(.{3}).+)k([AB].*)[\013 ]\2" -r '$1 $3' file
The -r '$1 $3' option prints the 1st and the 3rd capture groups and the result will be the same as perl.
In the general case, you can use the strings utility to pluck out ASCII from binary files; then of course you can try to grep that output for patterns that you find interesting.
Many traditional Unix utilities like grep have internal special markers which might get messed up by binary input. For example, the character \xFF was used for internal purposes by some versions of GNU grep so you can't grep for that character even if you can figure out a way to represent it in the shell (Bash supports $'\xff' for example).
A traditional approach would be to run hexdump or a similar utility, and then grep that for patterns. However, more modern scripting languages like Perl and Python make it easy to manipulate arbitrary binary data.
perl -ne 'print if m/\xff\xff/' </dev/urandom
This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed -En '/\n/!{s/M-\^G/\n/;s/7[^\n]*\n/\n&/};/^7[^\n]*/P;D' file
Split each line into zero or more lines that begin with 7 and end just before M-^G and only print such lines.

sed regular expression does not work as expected. Differs on pipe and file

I have a string in text file where i want to replace the version number. Quotation marks can vary from ' to ". Also spaces around = can be there and can be not as well:
$data['MODULEXXX_VERSION'] = "1.0.0";
For testing i use
echo "_VERSION'] = \"1.1.1\"" | sed "s/\(_VERSION.*\)[1-9]\.[1-9]\.[1-9]/\11.1.2/"
which works perfectly.
When i change it to search in the file (the file has the same string):
sed "s/\(_VERSION.*\)[1-9]\.[1-9]\.[1-9]/\11.1.2/" -i test.php
, it does not find anything.
After after playing with the search part of regex, i found one more odd thing:
sed "s/\(_VERSION.*\)[1-9]\./\1***/" -i test.php
works and changes the string to $data['MODULEXXX_VERSION'] = "***0.0";, but
sed "s/\(_VERSION.*\)[1-9]\.[1-9]/\1***/" -i test.php
does not find anything anymore. Why?
I am using Ubuntu 17.04 desktop.
Anyone can explain what am I doing wrong? What would be the best command for replacing version numbers in the file for the string $data['MODULEXXX_VERSION'] = "***0.0";?
The main problem is that [1-9] doesn't match the 0s in the version number. You need to use [0-9].
Besides that, you may use the following sed command:
sed -r 's/(.*_VERSION['\''"]]\s*=\s*).*/\1"1.0.1";/' conf.php
This doesn't look at the current value, it simply replaces everything after the =.
I've used -r which enables extended posix regular expressions which makes it a bit simpler to formulate the pattern.
Another, probably cleaner attempt is to store the conf.php as a template like conf.php.tpl and then use a template engine to render the file. Or if you really want to use sed, the file may look like:
$data['FOO_VERSION'] = "FOO_VERSION_TPL";
Then just use:
sed 's/FOO_VERSION_TPL/1.0.1/' conf.php.tpl > conf.php
If there are multiple values to replace:
sed \
-e 's/FOO/BAR/' \
-e 's/HELLO/WORLD/' \
conf.php.tpl > conf.php
But I recommend a template engine instead of sed. That becomes more important when the content of the variables to replace may contain characters special to regular expressions.

sed : match all instances of regex in infile1.txt, and output only these to outfile2.txt

I have a text file infile1 with 1,000's of lines.
I wish to use sed to extract the occuring instances of a regex pattern match to outfile2.
NB
Each instance of the regex pattern match may occur more than once on each line of infile1.
Each instance of the extracted regex pattern should be printed to a new line in outfile2.
Does anyone know the syntax within sed to place the regex into?
ps the regex pattern is
\(Google[ ]{1,3}“[a-zA-Z0-9 ]{1,100}[., ]{0,3}”\)
Thank you :)
I think you want
grep -oE 'Google[ ]{1,3}"[a-zA-Z0-9 ]{1,100}[., ]{0,3}"' filename
-o tells grep to print only the matches, each on a line of its own, and -E instructs it to interpret the regex in extended POSIX syntax, which your regex appears to be.
Note that [ ] could be replaced with just a space, and you might want to use [[:alnum:] ] instead of [a-zA-Z0-9 ] to cover umlauts and suchlike if they exist in the current locale.
Addendum: It is also possible to do this with sed. I don't recommend it, but you could write (using GNU sed):
sed -rn 's/Google[ ]{1,3}"[A-Za-z0-9 ]{1,100}[., ]{0,3}"/\n&\n/g; s/[^\n]*\n([^\n]*\n)/\1/g; s/\n[^\n]*$//p' filename
To make this work with older versions of BSD sed, use -En instead of -rn. -r and -E enable extended regex syntax. -r was historically used by GNU sed, -E by BSD sed; newer versions of them support both for compatibility. -n disables auto-printing.
The code works as follows:
# mark all occurrences of the regex by circumscribing them with newlines
s/Google[ ]{1,3}"[A-Za-z0-9 ]{1,100}[., ]{0,3}"/\n&\n/g
# Isolate every other line from the pattern space (the matches). This will
# leave the part behind the last match...
s/[^\n]*\n([^\n]*\n)/\1/g
# ...so we remove it afterwards and print the result of the transformation if it
# happened (the s///p flag does that). The transformation will not happen if
# there were no matches in the line (because then no newlines will have been
# inserted), so in those cases nothing will be printed.
s/\n[^\n]*$//p
It can be done with sed too, but it isn't pretty:
sed -n ':start /foo/{ h; s/\(foo\).*/\1/; s/.*\(foo\)/\1/; p; g; s/foo\(.*\)/\1/; b start; }' infile1 >outfile2
-- provided that you replace the four occurences of foo above with your pattern Google {1,3}“[a-zA-Z0-9 ]{1,100}[., ]{0,3}”.
Yeah, I told you it isn't pretty. :)

Getting rid of two ; characters only if they contain only blanks, with sed

I have a file with plenty of ; characters that act as a delimiter/separator. At some places, they are redundant. There are character sequences that are of the forms ;;, ;;;, ; ;, etc. Is there a way to get rid of one of those semicolons and what they have in between only if there is nothing in between them other than blanks?
In other words, I want to convert text; ; text; text; to text; text; text; by replacing either one of the forms I mentioned above with just one ;. I thought of using sed, but if another command can do the job, I'm of course ok with it.
I am using OS X Yosemite.
This should work:
sed 's/;\( *;\)\{1,\}/;/g'
An alternative would be
sed 's/\(; *\)\{1,\}/; /g'
With GNU sed, you could use \+ instead of \{1,\} instead of \+. You could also use extended regular expressions (-E on BSD sed, -r with Gnu sed) for a more readable regular expression:
sed -E 's/;( *;)+/;/g'
sed -E 's/(; *)+/;/g'
The difference between the two forms is that the second one will always make sure that there is a space after a semicolon. (Neither fixes spaces before the first semicolon in a series. Add a * to the beginning of the patterns if that's what you want.)