[bash] Escape a string for sed search pattern

Posted by Alexander Gladysh on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Alexander Gladysh
Published on 2009-01-02T17:44:15Z Indexed on 2010/04/24 18:43 UTC
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Filed under:

bash

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sed

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string-manipulation

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escape

In my bash script I have an external (received from user) string, which I should use in sed pattern.

REPLACE="<funny characters here>"
sed "s/KEYWORD/$REPLACE/g"

How can I escape the $REPLACE string so it would be safely accepted by sed as a literal replacement?

NOTE: The KEYWORD is a dumb substring with no matches etc. It is not supplied by user.

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