sed error: “invalid reference \1 on `s' command's RHS”

Question

I run several substitution commands as the core of a colorize script for maven. One of the sed commands uses a regular expression which works find in the shell

Answer 1

You need escape the / after the .

sed -e "s/\([a-zA-Z0-9.\/\\ :-]\+\)/\1/g"

Or if you don't want to worry about escaping, use |

sed -e "s|\([a-zA-Z0-9./\\ :-]\+\)|\1|g"

EDIT:

sed -e "s|WARNING: \([a-zA-Z0-9.-/\\ :]+\)|${warn}WARNING: \1${c_end}|g"