Bashscripts.org

I'm working on a script layout to have "theming scripts", that is, to be able to change lots of things appearance with just a command =P
I came to the conclusion that I will need to learn sed, and I'm on it. But some handy help would come great now =D
The only thing that rests unchangeable to me is my Openbox theme. There is a config file called rc.xml on ~/.config/openbox with a line that simply encloses the theme name between <theme><name></name></theme>

Now, I learned that with sed I can use -i option to take the input from the same file where I write the output. I asked for help on Freenode #Bash, but got a quickly "no" and a recommendation to use portable tools, like ed instead of sed. Is that advisable?

In any case, I found some lines on a script that seems to do something similar:



Tell you what I don't get:

- The use of the -e option in this case. I'd understood that it's used to have multiple replacements on the same sed instance.
- The {n;s part.
- Why it uses parentheses.

Thanks for your time!

Hey Juan, I know what you mean. I'll research this if I get a chance today. There is so much that you can do with sed, and so many options

Yes, sed(1) doesn't really edit files because it uses temporary ones, whereas ed(1) is an editor, not a stream editor.

The use of the -e option is not needed in this case, as the braces that just group commands.
The n command is here to « jump » to the line after the pattern <theme> was matched.