Error with sed replacing string

Question

Hello I need to replace a string but i receive error using string 'return false;'

#!bin/bash
oldstring='{alert("bash")}'
newstring='{return false;}'
grep -rl $oldstring /home/commons.bundle.js | xargs sed -i s/$oldstring/$newstring/g

error: sh deleteBoo.sh sed: espressione -e #1, carattere 25: comando `s' non terminato

Quote your variable expansions - see Why does my shell script choke on whitespace or other special characters? — steeldriver, Feb 03 '21 at 16:58
As two side notes, there's no need to recursively grep against one file; additionally, there's no need to grep for the string, since sed will only replace strings that it matched. — Jeff Schaller, Feb 03 '21 at 17:07
Running your script with bash -x yourscript might help in some cases. Paste it at http://shellcheck.net to check for errors with automatic suggestions how to fix some problems. (Unfortunately shellcheck doesn't suggest to quote all variables.) — Bodo, Feb 03 '21 at 17:24
Apart from what others have said, running sed from xargs with the output of grep will likely not do what you want as the lines matching the expression given to grep would be used as arguments, not input data, with sed. — Kusalananda, Feb 03 '21 at 17:27

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 04 '21 at 02:03

grep -rlZF -- "$oldstring" /home/commons.bundle.js |
xargs -r0 sed -i "s/$oldstring/$newstring/g" --

The following minor changes should make it work:

grep should use -F so that the strings passed are not evaluated by grep as regexes.
Another grep option to use is -Z which will pass filenames onto xargs using the null delimiter.
At the receiving end, xargs with -0 will unpack safely the filenames now. Nulls cannot occur in filenames by `law'

Error with sed replacing string

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