How to seek forward and replace selected characters with sed - regex

Question

Can I use sed to replace selected characters, for example H => X, 1 => 2, but first seek forward so that characters in first groups are not replaced.
Sample data:
"Hello World";"Number 1 is there";"tH1s-Has,1,HHunKnownData";
How it should be after sed:
"Hello World";"Number 1 is there";"tX2s-Xas,2,XXunKnownData";
What I have tried:
Nothing really, I would try but everything I know about sed expressions seems to be wrong.
Ok, I have tried to capture ([^;]+) and "skip" (get em back using ´\1\2´...) first groups separated by ;, this is working fine but then comes problem, if I use capturing I need to select whole group and if I don't use capturing I'll lose data.

Answer 1

This is possible with sed, but is kinda tedious. To do the translation if field number $FIELD you can use the following:
sed 's/\(\([^;]*;\)\{'$((FIELD-1))'\}\)\([^;]*;\)/\1\n\3\n/;h;s/[^\n]*\n\([^\n]*\).*/\1/;y/H1/X2/;G;s/\([^\n]*\)\n\([^\n]*\)\n\([^\n]*\)\n\([^\n]*\)/\2\1\4/'
Or, reducing the number of brackets with GNU sed:
sed -r 's/(([^;]*;){'$((FIELD-1))'})([^;]*;)/\1\n\3\n/;h;s/[^\n]*\n([^\n]*).*/\1/;y/H1/X2/;G;s/([^\n]*)\n([^\n]*)\n([^\n]*)\n([^\n]*)/\2\1\4/'
Example:
$ FIELD=3
$ echo '"Hello World";"Number 1 is there";"tH1s-Has,1,HHunKnownData";' | sed -r 's/(([^;]*;){'$((FIELD-1))'})([^;]*;)/\1\n\3\n/;h;s/[^\n]*\n([^\n]*).*/\1/;y/H1/X2/;G;s/([^\n]*)\n([^\n]*)\n([^\n]*)\n([^\n]*)/\2\1\4/'
"Hello World";"Number 1 is there";"tX2s-Xas,2,XXunKnownData";
$ FIELD=2
$ echo '"Hello World";"Number 1 is there";"tH1s-Has,1,HHunKnownData";' | sed -r 's/(([^;]*;){'$((FIELD-1))'})([^;]*;)/\1\n\3\n/;h;s/[^\n]*\n([^\n]*).*/\1/;y/H1/X2/;G;s/([^\n]*)\n([^\n]*)\n([^\n]*)\n([^\n]*)/\2\1\4/'
"Hello World";"Number 2 is there";"tH1s-Has,1,HHunKnownData";
There may be a simpler way that I didn't think of, though.

Answer 2

If awk is ok for you:
awk -F";" '{gsub("H","X",$3);gsub("1","2",$3);}1' OFS=";" file
Using -F, the file is split with semi-colon as delimiter, and hence now the 3rd field($3) is of our interest. gsub function substitutes all occurences of H with X in the 3rd field, and again 1 to 2.
1 is to print every line.

Answer 3

[UPDATE]
(I just realized that it could be shorter. Perl has an auto-split mode):
$F[2] =~ s/H/X/g; $F[2] =~ s/1/2/g; $_=join(";",#F)
Perl is not known for being particularly readable, but in this case I suspect the best you can get with sed might not be as clear as with Perl:
echo '"Hello World";"Number 1 is there";"tH1s-Has,1,HHunKnownData";' |
perl -F';' -ape '$F[2] =~ s/H/X/g; $F[2] =~ s/1/2/g; $_=join(";",#F)'
Taking apart the Perl code:
# your groups are in #F, accessed as $F[$i]
$F[2] =~ s/H/X/g; # Do whatever you want with your chosen (Nth) group.
$F[2] =~ s/1/2/g;
$_ = join(";", #F) # Put them back together.
perl -pe is like sed. (sort of.)
and perl -F';' -ape means use auto-splitting (-a) and set the field separator to ';'. Then your groups are accessible via $F[i] - so it works slightly like awk, too.
So it would also work like perl -F';' -ape '/*your code*/' < inputfile
I know you asked for a sed solution - I often find myself switching to Perl (though I do still like sed) for one-liners.

Answer 4

awk -F";" '{gsub("H","X",$3);gsub("1","2",$3);}1' Your_file

Answer 5

This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed 's/H/X/2g;s/1/2/2g' file
This changes all but the first occurrence of H or 1 to X or 2 respectively
If it's by fields separated by ;'s, use:
sed 's/H[^;]*;/&\n/;h;y/H/X/;H;g;s/\n.*\n//;s/1[^;]*;/&\n/;h;y/1/2/;H;g;s/\n.*\n//' file
This can be mutated to cater for many values, so:
echo -e "H=X\n1=2"|
sed -r 's|(.*)=(.*)|s/\1[^;]*;/\&\\n/;h;y/\1/\2/;H;g;s/\\n.*\\n//|' |
sed -f - file