How to delete from a text file, all lines that contain a specific string?

Question

How would I use sed to delete all lines in a text file that contain a specific string?

Answer 1

Curiously enough, the accepted answer does not actually answer the question directly. The question asks about using sed to replace a string, but the answer seems to presuppose knowledge of how to convert an arbitrary string into a regex.

Many programming language libraries have a function to perform such a transformation, e.g.

python: re.escape(STRING)
ruby: Regexp.escape(STRING)
java:  Pattern.quote(STRING)

But how to do it on the command line?

Since this is a sed-oriented question, one approach would be to use sed itself:

sed 's/\([\[/({.*+^$?]\)/\\\1/g'

So given an arbitrary string $STRING we could write something like:

re=$(sed 's/\([\[({.*+^$?]\)/\\\1/g' <<< "$STRING")
sed "/$re/d" FILE

or as a one-liner:

 sed "/$(sed 's/\([\[/({.*+^$?]\)/\\\1/g' <<< "$STRING")/d" 

with variations as described elsewhere on this page.