regex - Adding blank line spaces before and after pattern 'string' match

Question

I am trying to add 5 blank line spaces in a text file (text.txt) before and after string pattern matches. I used the following to get spaces after the 'string' match which worked for me-

sed '/string/{G;G;G;G;G;}' text.txt

I want to apply the same sed command to obtain 5 blank lines before the 'string' Here I don't want spaces, but rather blank lines before and after them. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

sed -r 's/(^.*)(string)(.*$)/1




2




3/' text.txt

Use -r or -E to allow regular expressions, split likes into three sections and then substitute the line for the first section, 5 new lines, the second section, 5 new lines and then finally the third section.