[BASH] automatic file fix

[wolfgentleman]

The code Vaphell suggested is absolutely OK. It doing nothing only means that the pattern could not match any string in the file. Check the pattern. Probably it should not be so specific. Perhaps

pattern='^( *-- *<> *)Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:[0-3][0-9]:[0-9]{2} -0500'

would do the trick?

As for the awk example it would work if you changed dates.txt to dates.

I did change dates.txt to dates.

I solved my own problem:

$ pattern="Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:[0-3][0-9]:[0-5][0-9] -0500"
$ num=$(wc -l <dates)
$ for((i=1;i<=${num};i+=1)); do date=$(sed -n "${i}p" <dates); t=$(sed "0,/${pattern}/s/${pattern}/${date}/" <changelog); echo "$t" > changelog; done

Thanks for the input.