I'm writing a simple script that will take URLs pointing to Evernote notes online, and convert them to the evernote:/// protocol. The regex I'm using matches and modifies the URL correctly when I try it out in a regex tester (I'm using Patterns for OS X). However, when I use it with sed, it just returns the original string.
echo "https://www.evernote.com/shard/s2/nl/227468/1875e55a-e512-4cf9-9b18-9e93c6a27359/" | sed 's#https?:_/_/www_.evernote_.com_/shard_/(..)_/nl_/(......)_/(.+_/)#evernote:_/_/_/view_/$2_/$1_/$3$3#'
Any idea why this isn't working? Thanks!
fort
[Edit: In case anyone's interested, this was for the AppleScript bit of a Keyboard Maestro macro:
set theURL to the clipboard
set ENcode to "echo \"" & theURL & "\" | sed -E 's#https?://www.evernote.com/shard/(..)/nl/(.*)/(.+/)#evernote:///view/\\2/\\1/\\3\\3#' | pbcopy"
do shell script ENcode
Thanks to @DreadPirateShawn for helping me fix the regex. ]
Using the extended regex flag -E, removing the underscores, and replacing each $1 pattern with \1 yields a functional regex here:
$ echo "https://www.evernote.com/shard/s2/nl/227468/1875e55a-e512-4cf9-9b18-9e93c6a27359/" | sed -E 's#https?://www\.evernote\.com/shard/(..)/nl/(......)/(.+/)#evernote:///view/\2/\1/\3\3#'
evernote:///view/227468/s2/1875e55a-e512-4cf9-9b18-9e93c6a27359/1875e55a-e512-4cf9-9b18-9e93c6a27359/
(Confirmed on Ubuntu 12.04 and OS X.)
If you don't use -E, then you also need to change s? to [s]? and escape the grouping parentheses:
$ echo "https://www.evernote.com/shard/s2/nl/227468/1875e55a-e512-4cf9-9b18-9e93c6a27359/" | sed 's#http[s]*://www\.evernote\.com/shard/\(.*\)/nl/\(.*\)/\(.*/\)#evernote:///view/\2/\1/\3\3#'
evernote:///view/227468/s2/1875e55a-e512-4cf9-9b18-9e93c6a27359/1875e55a-e512-4cf9-9b18-9e93c6a27359/
In the latter example, I also replaced each (....)-type sequence with (.*) -- unless you're absolutely positive of the length of each sequence (and even then perhaps), the (.*) approach will be a bit more flexible.