Append multiple lines, specified as verbatim bash variable, after a matched line in file?

Question

I would like to append multiple lines after a matched line in a text file in a bash script. While I don't particularly care what tool to choose for the job, the important thing to me is that I want to specify the lines appended "as is" inside the script (so without generating an additional file what would hold them) so they end up in a Bash variable, and without having to quote/escape anything in them - and for that purpose using a 'quoted' heredoc would work for me. Here is an example, appendtest.sh:

cat > mytestfile.txt <<'EOF'
    "'iceberg'"
    "'ice cliff'"
    "'ice field'"
    "'inlet'"
    "'island'"
    "'islet'"
    "'isthmus'"
EOF

IFS='' read -r -d '' REPLACER <<'EOF'
      "'$oasis$'"
      "'$ocean$'"
      "'$oceanic trench$'"
EOF

echo "$REPLACER"

sed -i "/    \"'ice field'\"/a${REPLACER}" mytestfile.txt

This unfortunately does not work:

$ bash appendtest.sh
      "'$oasis$'"
      "'$ocean$'"
      "'$oceanic trench$'"
sed: -e expression #1, char 39: unknown command: `"'

... because sed failed when an unescaped multiline replacement is used. So my question is:

• What could I use instead of sed to perform matching on a line of text, and inserting/appending the lines as specified in the Bash variable ($REPLACER in the example)?

Answer 1

If you are using GNU sed, your best option is to use the r command:

sed -i "/    \"'ice field'\"/ r /dev/stdin" mytestfile.txt <<'EOF'
      "'$oasis$'"
      "'$ocean$'"
      "'$oceanic trench$'"
EOF

Answer 2

OK, found one way using perl:

cat > mytestfile.txt <<'EOF'
    "'iceberg'"
    "'ice cliff'"
    "'ice field'"
    "'inlet'"
    "'island'"
    "'islet'"
    "'isthmus'"
EOF

IFS='' read -r -d '' REPLACER <<'EOF'
      "'$oasis$'"
      "'$ocean$'"
      "'$oceanic trench$'"
EOF

# echo "$REPLACER"

IFS='' read -r -d '' LOOKFOR <<'EOF'
    "'ice field'"
EOF
export REPLACER # so perl can access it via $ENV
# -pi will replace in-place but not print to stdout; -p will only print to stdout:
perl -pi -e "s/($LOOKFOR)/"'$1$ENV{"REPLACER"}'"/" mytestfile.txt
# also, with export LOOKFOR, this works:
# perl -pi -e 's/($ENV{"LOOKFOR"})/$1$ENV{"REPLACER"}/' mytestfile.txt
cat mytestfile.txt # see if the replacement is done

Output is as desired:

$ bash appendtest.sh
    "'iceberg'"
    "'ice cliff'"
    "'ice field'"
      "'$oasis$'"
      "'$ocean$'"
      "'$oceanic trench$'"
    "'inlet'"
    "'island'"
    "'islet'"
    "'isthmus'"