OK, I'm trying to use SED to change the value of a line in a text, with a variable that contains a path, but it does not really work. Ex. sed "/^VARIABLE1=/s/.*$/VARIABLE1=${VARIABLE1}/" $source_file > $target_file This does not work if VARIABLE1 contains a regular path ( "/vol01/just/a/path" ) But, if you do this, it works VARIABLE1=\\\/vol01\\\/just\\\/a\\\/path But I need to redefine each variable first, which is difficult How do I do that ?

show your contents of $source_file, and the part you need to change.

That line is: VARIABLE1=/u01/just/a/wrong/path Hi there.

use awk awk 'BEGIN{FS="="} /VARIABLE1/{ $2="/new/path" }1' file

That does not work

Although a slash is the standard delimiter, the operands of the sed substitution command can be delimited by any character that you hope will not be in your data. echo $VAR1 /vol01/just/a/path cat source_file VAR1=/u01/just/a/wrong/path sed "/^VAR1=/s%.*%VAR1=${VAR1}%" source_file VAR1=/vol01/just/a/path sed "/^VAR1=/s#.*#VAR1=${VAR1}#" source_file VAR1=/vol01/just/a/path sed "/^VAR1=/s@.*@VAR1=${VAR1}@" source_file VAR1=/vol01/just/a/path