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How do I add a line with leading spaces and a backslash at the end with sed?

I know the sed syntax for adding a line after another line in a file, which is

sed -i '/LINE1/a LINE2' FILE

Does it add LINE2 after correctly setting LINE1 to FILE? How do I add a backslash line at the end? For example from

This is a a line \
    Indented line1 \
    Indented line2 \
    Line3

For

This is a a line \
    Indented line1 \
    Indented line2 \
    Added line \
    Line3
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4 answers


Just insert the backslash and strip it out:

sed -i '/line2/a Added line \\' FILE


If you want an indentation with four spaces, then:

sed -i '/line2/a \    Added line \\' FILE
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You can use the insert command:



sed '/\\$/!i \    Added line \\' file
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Just use awk, sed is best for simple one-line substitutions, not for anything multi-line or anything else remotely complex:

$ awk '{print} /line2/{ print substr($0,1,match($0,/[^[:space:]]/)-1) "Added line \\" }' file
This is a a line \
    Indented line1 \
    Indented line2 \
    Added line \
    Line3

The above line will align your added line with the indented previous one, no matter what your leading white space means, because it just replaces anything after the space with your replacement text.

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does it work for you?

awk 'NR==3{$0=$0 "\n\tAdded Line \\"}7' file
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