Return code of sed for no match

as @cnicutar commented, the return code of a command means if the command was executed successfully. has nothing to do with the logic you implemented in the codes/scripts.

so if you have:

echo "foo"|sed '/bar/ s/a/b/'

sed will return 0 but if you write some syntax/expression errors, or the input/file doesn't exist, sed cannot execute your request, sed will return 1.

workaround

this is actually not workaround. sed has q command: (from man page):

 q [exit-code]

here you can define exit-code as you want. For example '/foo/!{q100}; {s/f/b/}' will exit with code 100 if foo isn't present, and otherwise perform the substitution f->b and exit with code 0.

Matched case:

kent$  echo "foo" | sed  '/foo/!{q100}; {s/f/b/}'
boo
kent$  echo $?
0

Unmatched case:

kent$ echo "trash" | sed  '/foo/!{q100}; {s/f/b/}'
trash
kent$ echo $?
100

I hope this answers your question.

edit

I must add that, the above example is just for one-line processing. I don't know your exact requirement. when you want to get exit 1. one-line unmatched or the whole file. If whole file unmatching case, you may consider awk, or even do a grep before your text processing...

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed '/search-string/{s//replacement-string/;h};${x;/./{x;q0};x;q1}' file

If the search-string is found it will be replaced with replacement-string and at end-of-file sed will exit with 0 return code. If no substitution takes place the return code will be 1.

A more detailed explanation:

In sed the user has two registers at his disposal: the pattern space (PS) in which the current line is loaded into (minus the linefeed) and a spare register called the hold space (HS) which is initially empty.

The general idea is to use the HS as a flag to indicate if a substitution has taken place. If the HS is still empty at the end of the file, then no changes have been made, otherwise changes have occurred.

The command /search-string/ matches search-string with whatever is in the PS and if it is found to contain the search-string the commands between the following curly braces are executed.

Firstly the substitution s//replacement-string/ (sed uses the last regexp i.e. the search-string, if the lefthand-side is empty, so s//replacement-string is the same as s/search-string/replacement-string/) and following this the h command makes a copy of the PS and puts it in the HS.

The sed command $ is used to recognise the last line of a file and the following then occurs.

First the x command swaps the two registers, so the HS becomes the PS and the PS becomes the HS.

Then the PS is searched for any character /./ (. means match any character) remember the HS (now the PS) was initially empty until a substitution took place. If the condition is true the x is again executed followed by q0 command which ends all sed processing and sets the return code to 0. Otherwise the x command is executed and the return code is set to 1.

N.B. although the q quits sed processing it does not prevent the PS from being reassembled by sed and printed as per normal.

Another alternative:

sed '/search-string/!ba;s//replacement-string/;h;:a;$!b;p;x;/./Q;Q1' file

or:

sed '/search-string/,${s//replacement-string/;b};$q1' file

These answers are all too complicated. What is wrong with writing a bit of shell script that uses grep to figure out if the thing you want to replace is there then using sed to replace it?

grep -q $TARGET_STRING $file
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
    echo "$file contains the old site"
    sed -e "s|${TARGET_STRING}|${NEW_STRING}|g" ....
fi