sed command doesn't work with open command

Question

I use sed to replace character ~ in string, and then open the folder of the path shown by this string on macOS.

#!/bin/bash
string="~/example"
echo $string | sed -r 's/~/\/JKFolder\/demo/'
open $string | sed -r 's/~/\/JKFolder\/demo/'

Echo can print the correct path /JKFolder/demo/ , but open can't, it seems to run the first part of the string, which is the same as open $string . Sed doesn't work in this command. Thank you.

Answer 1

When you omit echo the string variable is not passed to sed , hence it does not work.

This would work:

open $(sed 's/~/\/JKFolder\/demo/' <<< "$string")
open $(echo "$string" | sed 's/~/\/JKFolder\/demo/')
open $(echo "$string" | sed 's,~,/JKFolder/demo,')

However, you do not really need sed in this case, you can just use

open "${string/\~/\/JKFolder\/demo}"

See this online demo .

The "${string/\~/\/JKFolder\/demo}" is an example of a variable expansion, where the first occurrence of a ~ char is replaced with /JKFolder/demo string.