replace nth occurence of string in each line of a text file

Posted by dnkb on Super User See other posts from Super User or by dnkb
Published on 2010-05-20T16:12:18Z Indexed on 2010/05/20 16:20 UTC
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sed

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command-line

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awk

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text

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linux

I have large text files with space delimited strings (2-5). The strings can contain "'" or "-". I'd like to replace say the second space with a pipe. What's the best way to go? Using sed I was thinking of this:

sed -r 's/(^[a-z'-]+ [a-z'-]+\b) /\1|/' filename.txt

Any other/better/simpler ideas?

Thank you

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