I am facing a situation that drives me nuts. I am setting up an update server which uses a json file. Don't ask why or how, it sucks and is my only possibility to achieve it. I have been trying and researching for HOURS (many) because I went ballistic and wanted to crack this on my own. But I have to realize I got stuck and need help. So sorry for this chunk but I think it is somewhat important to see... The file is a one liner and repeating the following sequence with changing values (of course). "plugin_name_foo_bar": {"buildDate": "bla", "dependencies": [{"name": "bla", "optional": true, "version": "1.00"}], "developers": [{"developerId": "bla", "email": "[email protected]", "name": "Bla bla2nd"}], "excerpt": "some text {excerpt} !bla.png|thumbnail,border=1! ", "gav": "bla", "labels": ["report", "scm-related"], "name": "plugin_name_foo_bar", "previousTimestamp": "bla", "previousVersion": "1.0", "releaseTimestamp": "bla", "requiredCore": "1", "scm": "github.com", "sha1": "ynnBM2jWo25ZLDdP3ybBOnV/Pio=", "title": "bla", "url": "http://bla.org", "version": "1.0", "wiki": "https://bla.org"}, "Exclusion": {"buildDate": "bla", "dependencies": [], and the next plugin block is glued straight afterwards. What I now want to do is to search for "plugin_foo_bar": {" as this is the unique identifier for a new plugin description block. I want to replace the first sha1 value occuring afterwards. That's where I keep failing. I always grab the first,last or any occurrence in the entire file and not the block :( "title" is the unique identifier after the sha1 value. So I tried to make the .* less greedy but it ain't working out. last attempt was heading towards: sed -i 's/("name": "plugin_name_foo_bar.*sha1": ")([a-zA-Z0-9!@#\$%^&*()\[\]]*)(", "title"\)/\1blablabla\2/1' default.json to find the sha1 value of that plugin but still no joy. I hope someone knows - preferably a simpler approach - before I now continue with trial and error until I have to puke and freakout. I am working with SED on Windows, so Unix approach might help me to figure out how to achieve this in batch but please make it as one-liner if possible. Scripts are a real pain to convert. And I just need SED and no other solution with other tools like AWK. That is absolutely out of discussion. Any help is appreciated :) Cheers Jan