Modify config file using bash script

I'm writing a bash script to modify a config file which contains a bunch of key/value pairs. How can I read the key and find the value and possibly modify it?

A wild stab in the dark for modifying a single value:

sed -c -i "s/\($TARGET_KEY *= *\).*/\1$REPLACEMENT_VALUE/" $CONFIG_FILE

assuming that the target key and replacement value don't contain any special regex characters, and that your key-value separator is "=". Note, the -c option is system dependent and you may need to omit it for sed to execute.

For other tips on how to do similar replacements (e.g., when the REPLACEMENT_VALUE has '/' characters in it), there are some great examples here.

Hope this helps someone. I created a self contained script, which required config processing of sorts.

#!/bin/bash
CONFIG="/tmp/test.cfg"

# Use this to set the new config value, needs 2 parameters. 
# You could check that $1 and $2 is set, but I am lazy
function set_config(){
    sudo sed -i "s/^\($1\s*=\s*\).*\$/\1$2/" $CONFIG
}

# INITIALIZE CONFIG IF IT'S MISSING
if [ ! -e "${CONFIG}" ] ; then
    # Set default variable value
    sudo touch $CONFIG
    echo "myname=\"Test\"" | sudo tee --append $CONFIG
fi

# LOAD THE CONFIG FILE
source $CONFIG

echo "${myname}" # SHOULD OUTPUT DEFAULT (test) ON FIRST RUN
myname="Erl"
echo "${myname}" # SHOULD OUTPUT Erl
set_config myname $myname # SETS THE NEW VALUE