Sed

Sed - An Introduction
Last update Sun Sep 24 19:44:00 EDT 2006
Thanks to Keelan Evans for spotting some typos.
Thanks to Wim Stolker as well.
Table of Contents
The Awful Truth about sed
The essential command: s for substitution
The slash as a delimiter
Using & as the matched string
Using 1 to keep part of the pattern
Substitute Flags
/g - Global replacement
Is sed recursive?
/1, /2, etc. Specifying which occurrence
/p - print
Write to a file with /w filename
Combining substitution flags
Arguments and invocation of sed
Multiple commands with -e command
Filenames on the command line
sed -n: no printing
sed -f scriptname
sed in shell script
Quoting multiple sed lines in the C shell
Quoting multiple sed lines in the Bourne shell
A sed interpreter script
Sed Comments
Passing arguments into a sed script
Using sed in a shell here-is document
Multiple commands and order of execution
Addresses and Ranges of Text
Restricting to a line number
Patterns
Ranges by line number
Ranges by patterns
Delete with d
Printing with p
Reversing the restriction with !
Relationships between d, p, and !
The q or quit command
Grouping with { and }
Writing a file with the ‘w‘ command
Reading in a file with the ‘r‘ command
SunOS and the # Comment Command
Adding, Changing, Inserting new lines
Append a line with ‘a‘
Insert a line with ‘i‘
Change a line with ‘c‘
Leading tabs and spaces in a sed script
Adding more than one line
Adding lines and the pattern space
Address ranges and the above commands
Multi-Line Patterns
Print line number with =
Transform with y
Displaying control characters with a l
Working with Multiple Lines
Using new lines in sed secripts
The Hold Buffer
Exchange with x
Example of Context Grep
Hold with h or H
Keeping more than one line in the hold buffer
Get with g or G
Flow Control
Testing with t
An alternate way of adding comments
The poorly undocumented ;
Passing regular expressions as arguments
Command Summary
In Conclusion
Copyright 2001,2005 Bruce Barnett and General Electric Company
All rights reserved
You are allowed to print copies of this tutorial for your personaluse, and link to this page, but you are not allowed to make electroniccopies, or redistribute this tutorial in any form without permission.
Introduction to Sed
How to use sed, a special editor for modifying files automatically.If you want to write a program to make changes in a file, sed is thetool to use.
There are a few programs that are the real workhorse in the Unixtoolbox.These programs are simple to use for simple applications, yet have arich set of commands for performing complex actions.Don‘t let the complex potential of a program keep you from making useof the simpler aspects. This chapter, like all of the rest, start withthe simple concepts and introduces the advanced topics later on.
A note on comments. When I first wrote this, most versions of seddid not allow you to place comments inside the script.Lines starting with the ‘#‘ characters are comments.Newer versions of sed may support comments at the end of the line as well.
The Awful Truth about sed
Sed is the ultimate stream editor.If that sounds strange, picture a stream flowing through a pipe.Okay, you can‘t see a stream if it‘s inside a pipe.That‘s what I get for attempting a flowing analogy.You want literature, read James Joyce.
Anyhow,sed is a marvelous utility.Unfortunately, most people never learn its real power.The language is very simple, but thedocumentation is terrible. The Solaris on-line manual pages forsed are five pages long, andtwo of those pages describe the 34 different errors you can get.A program that spends as much space documenting the errors than itdoesdocumenting the language has a serious learning curve.
Do not fret! It is not your fault you don‘t understandsed. I will coversed completely.But I will describe the features in the order that I learned them.I didn‘t learn everything at once. You don‘t need to either.
The essential command: s for substitution
Sed has several commands, but most people only learn the substitute command:s. The substitute command changes all occurrences of the regularexpression into a new value. A simple example is changing"day" to"night:"
sed s/day/night/ new
I didn‘t put quotes around the argument because this example didn‘t need them.If you read my earlier tutorial, you would understand why it doesn‘tneed quotes. If you have meta-characters in the command, quotes are necessary.In any case, quoting is a good habit, and I will henceforth quote futureexamples.That is:
sed ‘s/day/night/‘ new
There are four parts to this substitute command:
s Substitute command
/../../ Delimiter
day Regular Expression Pattern String
night Replacement string
We‘ve coveredquoting and regular expressions..That‘s 90% of theeffort needed to learn the substitute command.To put it another way, you already know how to handle 90% of the mostfrequent uses ofsed. There are a few fine points that must be covered.
The slash as a delimiter
The character after thes is the delimiter. It is conventionally a slash, becausethis is whated,more, andvi use.It can be anything you want, however.If you want to change a pathname that contains a slash - say /usr/local/bin to /common/bin - you coulduse the backslash to quote the slash:
sed ‘s/\/usr\/local\/bin/\/common\/bin/‘ new
Gulp. It is easier to read if you use an underline instead of a slashas a delimiter:
sed ‘s_/usr/local/bin_/common/bin_‘ new
Some people use commas, others use the"|" character. Pick one you like. As long as it‘s not in the string you are looking for, anything goes.
Using & as the matched string
Sometimes you want to search for a pattern and add some characters,like parenthesis,around or nearthe pattern you found. It is easy to do this if you are looking for aparticular string:
sed ‘s/abc/(abc)/‘ new
This won‘t work if you don‘t know exactly what you will find.How can you put the string you found in the replacement stringif you don‘t know what it is?
The solution requires the special character"&." It corresponds to the pattern found.
sed ‘s/[a-z]*/(&)/‘ new
You can have any number of"&" in the replacement string.You could also double a pattern, e.g. the first number of a line:
% echo "123 abc" | sed ‘s/[0-9]*/& &/‘
123 123 abc
Let me slightly amend this example. Sed will match the first string,and make it as greedy as possible. The first match for ‘[0-9]*‘ isthe first character on the line, as this matches zero of morenumbers. So if the input was "abc 123" the output would be unchanged.A better way to duplicate the number is to make sure it matches a number:% echo "123 abc" | sed ‘s/[0-9][0-9]*/& &/‘
123 123 abc
Using 1 to keep part of the pattern
I have already described the use of"("")" and"1" in my tutorial onregular expressions.To review, the escapedparenthesis remember portions of the regular expression.The"1" is the first remembered pattern, and the"2" is the second remembered pattern.If you wanted to keep the first word of a line, and delete the restof the line,mark the important part with the parenthesis:
sed ‘s/\([a-z]*\)*/\1/‘
If you want to switch two words around, you can remember two patternsandchange the order around:
sed ‘s/\([a-z]*\) \([a-z]*\)/\2 \1/‘
The"\1" doesn‘t have to be in the replacement string. It can be in the patternyou are searching for.If you want to eliminate duplicated words, you can try:
sed ‘s/\([a-z]*)\ \1/\1/‘
You can have up to nine values:"\1" thru"\9."
Substitute Flags
You can add additional flags after the last delimiter.These flags can specify what happens when there is more than oneoccurrence of a pattern on a single line, and what to do if asubstitution is found.
/g - Global replacement
Most Unix utilties work on files, reading a line at a time.Sed, by default, is the same way.If you tell it to change a word, it will only change the firstoccurrence of the word on a line.You may want to make the change on every word on the line instead ofthe first. For an example, let‘s place parentheses around words on aline.Instead of using a pattern like"[A-Za-z]*" which won‘t match words like"won‘t," we will use a pattern,"[^ ]*," that matches everything except a space.Well, this will also match anything because"*" meanszero or more. The current version ofsed can get unhappy with patterns like this, and generate errorslike"Output line too long" or even run forever.I consider this a bug, and have reported this to Sun.As a work-around, you must avoid matching the null stringwhen using the"g" flag tosed. A work-around example is:"[^ ][^ ]*." The following will put parenthesis around the first word:
sed ‘s/[^ ]*/(&)/‘ new
If you want it to make changes for every word, add a"g" after the last delimiter and use the work-around:
sed ‘s/[^ ][^ ]*/(&)/g‘ new
Is sed recursive?
Sed only operates on patterns found in the in-coming data.That is, the input line is read, and when a pattern is matched, themodified output is generated, and therest of the input line is scanned. The"s" command will not scan the newly created output.That is,you don‘t have to worry about expressions like:
sed ‘s/loop/loop the loop/g‘ new
This will not cause an infinite loop.If a second"s" command is executed, it could modify the results of a previouscommand. I will show you how to execute multiple commands leter.
/1, /2, etc. Specifying which occurrence
With no flags, the first pattern is changed.With the"g" option, all patterns are changed.If you want to modify a particular pattern that is not the first one onthe line, you could use"\(" and"\)" to mark each pattern, and use"\1" to put the first pattern back unchanged. This next examplekeeps the first word on the line but deletes the second:
sed ‘s/\([a-zA-Z]*\) \([a-zA-Z]*\) /\1 /‘ new
Yuck. There is an easier way to do this. You can add a number after thesubstitution command to indicate you only want to match that particularpattern. Using this, an
sed ‘s/[a-zA-Z]* //2‘ new
Note the space after the"*." Without the space,sed will run a long, long time.(Note: this bug is probably fixed by now.)This is because the number flag and the"g" flag have the same bug.You should also be able to use the pattern
sed ‘s/[^ ]*//2‘ new
but this also eats CPU.If this worked, and it does on some Unix systems, you couldremove the encrypted password from the password file:
sed ‘s/[^:]*//2‘ /etc/password.new
But this doesn‘t work. Using"[^:][^:]*" as a work-around doesn‘t help because it won‘t matchan non-existant password, and instead delete the third field, which isthe user ID!Instead you have to use the ugly parenthesis:
sed ‘s/^\([^:]*\):[^:]:/\1::/‘ /etc/password.new
You could also add a character to the first pattern so that itno longer matches the null pattern:
sed ‘s/[^:]*:/:/2‘ /etc/password.new
The number flag is not restricted to a single digit. It can be any numberfrom 1 to 512. If you wanted to add a colon after the 80th characterin each line, you could type:
sed ‘s/./&:/80‘ new
/p - print
By default,sed prints every line.If it makes a substitution, the new text is printed instead of theold one.If you use an optional argument to sed,"sed -n," it will not, by default, print any new lines.I‘ll cover this and other options later.When the"-n" option is used, the"p" flag will cause the modified line to be printed.Here is one way to duplicate the function ofgrep withsed:
sed -n ‘s/pattern/&/p‘ Write to a file with /w filename
There is one more flags that can follow the third delimiter.With it, you can specify a file that will receive the modified data.An example is the following, which will write all lines that startwith an even number to the fileeven:
sed -n ‘s/^[0-9]*[02468] /&/w even‘ In this example, the output file isn‘t needed, as theinput was not modified.You must have exactly one space between thew and the filename. You can also have ten files open with oneinstance ofsed. This allows you to split up a stream of data into separate files.Using the previous example combined with multiple substitutioncommands described later, you could split a file intoten pieces depending on the last digit of the first number.You could also use this method to log error or debugging informationto a special file.
Combining substitution flags
You can combine flags when it makes sense.Some things that don‘t work are using a number and a"g" flag, because this is inconsistent.Also"w" has to be the last flag.For example the following command works:
sed -n ‘s/a/A/2pw /tmp/file‘ new
Next I will discussion the options tosed, and different ways toinvokesed.
Arguments and invocation of sed
previously, I have only used one substitute command.If you need to make two changes, and you didn‘t want to read themanual, you could pipe togethermultiplesed commands:
sed ‘s/BEGIN/begin/‘ new
This used two processes instead of one. Ased gurunever uses two processes when one can do.
Multiple commands with -e command
One method of combining multiple commands is to use a-e before each command:
sed -e ‘s/a/A/‘ -e ‘s/b/B/‘ new
A"-e" isn‘t needed in the earlier examples becausesed knows that there must always be one command.If you givesed one argument, it must be a command, andsed will edit the data read from standard input.
Also seeQuoting multiple sed lines in the Bourne shell
Filenames on the command line
You can specify files on the command line if you wish.If there is more than one argument tosed that does not start with an option, it must be a filename.This next example will count the number of lines in three filesthat don‘t begin with a"#:"
sed ‘s/^#.*//‘ f1 f2 f3 | grep -v ‘^$‘ | wc -l
Thesed substitute command changes every line that starts with a"#" into a blank line.Grep was used to filter out empty lines.Wc counts the number of lines left.Sed has more commands that makegrep unnecessary. But I will cover that later.
Of course you could write the last example using the"-e" option:
sed -e ‘s/^#.*//‘ f1 f2 f3 | grep -v ‘^$‘ | wc -l
There are two other options tosed.
sed -n: no printing
The"-n" option will not print anything unless a explicit request to printis found. I mentioned the"/p" flag to the substitute command as one way to turn printing back on.Let me clarify this. The command
sed ‘s/PATTERN/&/p‘ file
acts like thecat program: e.g. nothing is changed.Add the"-n" option and the example acts like grep:
sed -n ‘s/PATTERN/&/p‘ file
sed -f scriptname
If you have a large number ofsed commands, you can put then into a file and use
sed -f sedscript new
wheresedscript could look like this:
# sed comment - This script changes lower case vowels to upper case
s/a/A/g
s/e/E/g
s/i/I/g
s/o/O/g
s/u/U/g
When there are several commands in one file,eachcommand must be on separate line.
Also seehere
sed in shell script
If you have many commands and they won‘t fit neatly on one line, youcan break up the line using a backslash:
sed -e ‘s/a/A/g‘
-e ‘s/e/E/g‘ \
-e ‘s/i/I/g‘ \
-e ‘s/o/O/g‘ \
-e ‘s/u/U/g‘ new
Quoting multiple sed lines in the C shell
You can have a large, multi-linesed script in the C shell, but you must tell the C shell that the quote iscontinued across several lines.This is done by placing a back slash at the end of each line:
#!/bin/csh -f
sed ‘s/a/A/g \
s/e/E/g \
s/i/I/g \
s/o/O/g \
s/u/U/g‘ new
Quoting multiple sed lines in the Bourne shell
The Bourne shell makes this easier as a quote can cover several lines:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
s/a/A/g
s/e/E/g
s/i/I/g
s/o/O/g
s/u/U/g‘ new
A sed interpreter script
Another way of executingsed is to use an interpreter script.Create a file that contains:
#!/bin/sed -f
s/a/A/g
s/e/E/g
s/i/I/g
s/o/O/g
s/u/U/g
Click here to get file:CapVowel.sed
If this script was stored in a file with the name"CapVowel" and was executable, you could use it with the simple command:
CapVowel new
Comments
Sed comments are lines where the first non-white character is a"#." On many systems,sed can have only one comment, and it must be the first line of the script.On the Sun (1988 when I wrote this),you can have several comment lines anywhere in the script.Modern versions of Sed support this.If the first line contains exactly"#n" then this does the same thing as the"-n" option: turning off printing by default.This cannot be done with ased interpreter script, because the first line must start with"#!/bin/sed -f."
Passing arguments into a sed script
Passing a word into a shell script that callssed is easy if you rememberedmy tutorial on the Unix quoting mechanism.To review, you use the single quotes to turn quoting on and off.A simple shell script that usessed to emulate grep is:
#!/bin/sh
sed -n ‘s/‘$1‘/&/p‘
Click here to get file:sedgrep.sed
If this was stored in a file calledsedgrep, you could type
sedgrep ‘[A-Z][A-Z]‘ Using sed in a shell here-is document
You can usesed to prompt the user for some parameters and then create a file withthose parameters filled in.You could create a file with dummy values placed inside it, and usesed to change those dummy values. A simpler way is to use the"here is" document, which uses part of the shell script as if it were standard input:
#!/bin/sh
echo -n ‘what is the value? ‘
read value
sed ‘s/XXX/‘$value‘/‘ <The value is XXX
EOF
Click here to get file:sed_hereis.sed
When executed, the script says:
what is the value?
If you type in"123," the next line will be:
The value is 123
I admit this is a contrived example."Here is" documents can have values evaluated without the use of sed. Thisexample does the same thing:
#!/bin/sh
echo -n ‘what is the value? ‘
read value
cat <The value is $value
EOF
However, combining"here is" documents withsed can be useful for some complex cases.
Note that
sed ‘s/XXX/‘$value‘/‘ <will give a syntax error if the user types a space.Better form would be to use
sed ‘s/XXX/‘"$value"‘/‘ <Multiple commands and order of execution
As we explore more of the commands ofsed, the commands will become complex, and the actual sequence can beconfusing.It‘s really quite simple. Each line is read in.The various commands, in order specified by the user, has a chance tooperate on the input line.After the substitutions are made, the next command has a chanceto operate on the same line, which may have been modified by earliercommands.If you ever have a question, the best way to learn what will happenis to create a small example. If a complex command doesn‘t work, makeit simpler. If you are having problems getting a complex scriptworking, break it up into two smaller scripts and pipe the two scripts together.
Addresses and Ranges of Text
You have only learned one command, and you can see howpowerfulsed is.However, all it is doing is agrep and substitute.That is, the substitute command is treating each lineby itself, without caring about nearby lines.What would be useful is the ability to restrict the operationto certain lines. Some useful restrictions might be:
Specifying a line by its number.
Specifying a range of lines by number.
All lines containing a pattern.
All lines from the beginning of a file to a regular expression
All lines from a regular expression to the end of the file.
All lines between two regular expressions.
Sed can do all that and more.Every command insed can be proceeded by an address, range or restrictionlike the above examples. The restriction or address immediatelyprecedes the command:
restriction command
Restricting to a line number
The simplest restriction is a line number. If you wanted to delete thefirst number on line 3, just add a"3" before the command:
sed ‘3 s/[0-9][0-9]*//‘ new
Patterns
Many Unix utilities likevi andmore use a slash to search for a regular expression.Sed uses the same convention, provided you terminate the expression with aslash.To delete the first number on all lines thatstart with a"#," use:
sed ‘/^#/ s/[0-9][0-9]*//‘
I placed a space after the"/expression/" so it is easier to read. It isn‘t necessary, butwithout it the command is harder to fathom.Sed does provide a few extra options when specifying regular expressions.But I‘ll discuss those later.If the expression starts with a backslash, the next character is thedelimiter. To use a comma instead of a slash, use:
sed ‘\,^#, s/[0-9][0-9]*//‘
The main advantage of this feature is searching for slashes.Suppose you wanted to search for the string"/usr/local/bin" and you wanted to change it for"/common/all/bin." You could use the backslash to escape the slash:
sed ‘/\/usr\/local\/bin/ s/\/usr\/local/\/common\/all/‘
It would be easier to follow if you used an underline instead ofa slash as a search. This example uses the underline in both thesearch commandand the substitute command:
sed ‘\_/usr/local/bin_ s_/usr/local_/common/all_‘
This illustrates whysed scripts get the reputation for obscurity.I could be perverse and show you the example that will search for alllines that start with a"g," and change each"g" on that line to an"s:"
sed ‘/^g/s/g/s/g‘
Adding a space and using an underscore after the substitute commandmakes thismuch easier to read:
sed ‘/^g/ s_g_s_g‘
Er, I take that back. It‘s hopeless.There is a lesson here: Use comments liberally in ased script under SunOS.You may have to remove the comments to run the script under adifferent operating system, but you now know how to write ased script to to that very easily!Comments are a Good Thing.You may have understood the script perfectly when you wrote it.But six months from now it could look like modem noise.
Ranges by line number
You can specify a range on line numbers by inserting a comma betweenthe numbers. To restrict a substitution to the first 100 lines, youcan use:
sed ‘1,100 s/A/a/‘
If you know exactly how many lines are in a file, you canexplicitly state that number to perform the substitution on the restof the file. In this case, assume you usedwc to find out there are 532 lines in the file:
sed ‘101,532 s/A/a/‘
An easier way is to use the special character"$," which means the last line in the file.
sed ‘101,$ s/A/a/‘
The"$" is one of those conventions that mean"last" in utilities likecat,vi, anded. Line numbers are cumulative if several files are edited. That is,
sed ‘200,300 s/A/a/‘ f1 f2 f3 >new
is the same as
cat f1 f2 f3 | sed ‘200,300 s/A/a/‘ >new
Ranges by patterns
You can specify two regular expressions as the range.Assuming a"#" starts a comment, you can search for a keyword,remove all comments until you see the second keyword.In this case the two keywords are"start" and"stop:"
sed ‘/start/,/stop/ s/#.*//‘
The first pattern turns on a flag that tellssed to perform the substitute command on every line.The second pattern turns off the flag.If the"start" and"stop" pattern occurs twice, the substitution is done both times.If the"stop" pattern is missing, the flag is never turned off, and thesubstitutionwill be performed on every line until the end of the file.
You should know that if the"start"pattern is found, the substitution occurs on the same line that contains"start."This turns on a switch, which is line oriented. That is,the next line is read. If it contains"stop"the switch is turned off. Otherwise, the substitution command is tried.Switches are line oriented, and not word oriented.
You can combine line numbers and regular expressions.This example will remove comments from the beginning of the file untilit finds the keyword"start:"
sed -e ‘1,/start/ s/#.*//‘
This example will remove comments everywhere except the linesbetween the two keywords:
sed -e ‘1,/start/ s/#.*//‘ -e ‘/stop/,$ s/#.*//‘
The last example has a range that overlaps the"/start/,/stop/" range, as both ranges operate on the lines that contain the keywords.I will show you later how to restrict a command up to,but not including the line containing the specified pattern.
Before I start discussing the various commands, should show know thatsome commands cannot operate on a range of lines. I will let you knowwhen I mention the commands.I will describe three commands in this secton. One of the three cannotoperate on a range.
Delete with d
Using ranges can be confusing, so you should expect to do someexperimentationwhen you are trying out a new script.A useful command deletesevery line that matches the restriction:"d." If you want to look at the first 10 lines of a file, you can use:
sed ‘11,$ d‘ which is similar in function to thehead command.If you want to chop off the header of a mail message, which iseverything up to the first blank line, use:
sed ‘1,/^$/ d‘ You can duplicate the function of thetail command, assuming you know the length of a file.Wc can count the lines, andexpr can subtract 10 from the number of lines.A Bourne shell script to look at the last 10 lines of a filemight look like this:
#!/bin/sh
#print last 10 lines of file
# First argument is the filename
lines=`wc -l $1 | awk ‘{print $1}‘ `
start=`expr $lines - 10`
sed "1,$start d" $1
Click here to get file:sed_tail.sh
The range for deletions can be regular expressions pairs to mark thebegin and end of the operation.Or it can be a single regular expression.Deleting all lines that start with a"#" is easy:
sed ‘/^#/ d‘
Removing comments and blank lines takes two commands.The first removes every character from the"#" to the end of the line, and the second deletes all blank lines:
sed -e ‘s/#.*//‘ -e ‘/^$/ d‘
A third one should be added to remove all blanks and tabsimmediately before the end of line:
sed -e ‘s/#.*//‘ -e ‘s/[ ^I]*$//‘ -e ‘/^$/ d‘
The character"^I" is aCRTL-I or tab character.You would have to explicitly type in the tab.Note the order of operations above, which is in that order for a verygood reason.Comments might startin the middle of a line, with white space characters before them.Therefore comments are first removed from a line, potentially leavingwhite space characters that were before the comment.The second command removes all trailing blanks, sothat lines that are now blank areconverted to empty lines.The last command deletes empty lines.Together, the three commands removes all lines containing onlycomments, tabs or spaces.
This demonstrates the pattern spacesed uses to operate on a line.The actual operationsed uses is:
Copy the input line into the pattern space.
Apply the first
sed command on the pattern space, if the address restriction is true.
Repeat with the next sed expression, again
operating on the pattern space.
When the last operation is performed, write out the pattern space
and read in the next line from the input file.
Printing with p
Another useful command is the print command:"p." Ifsed wasn‘t started with an"-n" option, the"p" command will duplicate the input. The command
sed ‘p‘
will duplicate every line. If you wanted to double every empty line,use:
sed ‘/^$/ p‘
Adding the"-n" option turns off printing unless you request it.Another way of duplicatinghead‘s functionality is to print only the lines you want.This example prints the first 10 lines:
sed -n ‘1,10 p‘ Sed can act likegrep by combining the print operator to function on all lines thatmatch a regular expression:
sed -n ‘/match/ p‘
which is the same as:
grep match
Reversing the restriction with !
Sometimes you need to perform an action on every line exceptthose that match a regular expression, or those outside of a range ofaddresses. The"!" character, which often meansnot in Unix utilities, inverts the address restriction.You remember that
sed -n ‘/match/ p‘
acts like thegrep command. The"-v" option togrep prints all lines that don‘t contain the pattern.Sed can do this with
sed -n ‘/match/ !p‘ Relationships between d, p, and !
As you may have noticed, there are often several ways tosolve the same problem withsed. This is becauseprint anddelete are opposite functions, andit appears that"!p" is similar to"d," while"!d" is similar to"p." I wanted to test this, so I created a 20 line file, and tried everydifferent combination.The following table, which shows the results,demonstrates the difference:
Relations between d, p, and !
Sed Range Command Results
--------------------------------------------------------
sed -n 1,10 p Print first 10 lines
sed -n 11,$ !p Print first 10 lines
sed 1,10 !d Print first 10 lines
sed 11,$ d Print first 10 lines
--------------------------------------------------------
sed -n 1,10 !p Print last 10 lines
sed -n 11,$ p Print last 10 lines
sed 1,10 d Print last 10 lines
sed 11,$ !d Print last 10 lines
--------------------------------------------------------
sed -n 1,10 d Nothing printed
sed -n 1,10 !d Nothing printed
sed -n 11,$ d Nothing printed
sed -n 11,$ !d Nothing printed
--------------------------------------------------------
sed 1,10 p Print first 10 lines twice,
Then next 10 lines once
sed 11,$ !p Print first 10 lines twice,
Then last 10 lines once
--------------------------------------------------------
sed 1,10 !p Print first 10 lines once,
Then last 10 lines twice
sed 11,$ p Print first 10 lines once,
then last 10 lines twice
This table shows that the following commands are identical:
sed -n ‘1,10 p‘
sed -n ‘11,$ !p‘
sed ‘1,10 !d‘
sed ‘11,$ d‘
It also shows that the"!" command "inverts" the address range, operating on the other lines.
The q or quit command
There is one more simple command that can restrict the changes to aset of lines. It is the"q" command: quit.the third way to duplicate the head command is:
sed ‘11 q‘
which quits when the eleventh line is reached.This command is most useful when you wish to abortthe editing after some condition is reached.
The"q" command is the one command that does not take a range of addresses.Obviously the command
sed ‘1,10 q‘
cannot quit 10 times. Instead
sed ‘1 q‘
or
sed ‘10 q‘
is correct.
Grouping with { and }
The curly braces,"{" and"}," are used to group thecommands.
Hardly worth the build up. All that prose and the solution is justmatching squigqles. Well, there is one complication.Since eachsed command must start on its own line, the curly braces and the nestedsed commands must be on separate lines.
Previously, I showed you how to remove comments starting with a"#." If you wanted to restrict the removal to lines between special"begin" and"end" key words, you could use:
#!/bin/sh
# This is a Borne shell script that removes #-type comments
# between ‘begin‘ and ‘end‘ words.
sed -n ‘
/begin/,/end/ {
s/#.*//
s/[ ^I]*$//
/^$/ d
p
}
‘
Click here to get file:sed_begin_end.sh
These braces can be nested, which allow you to combine address ranges.You could perform the same action as before, but limit the change tothe first 100 lines:
#!/bin/sh
# This is a Borne shell script that removes #-type comments
# between ‘begin‘ and ‘end‘ words.
sed -n ‘
1,100 {
/begin/,/end/ {
s/#.*//
s/[ ^I]*$//
/^$/ d
p
}
}
‘
Click here to get file:sed_begin_end1.sh
You can place a"!" before a set of curly braces.This inverts the address, which removes comments fromall linesexcept those between the two reserved words:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/begin/,/end/ !{
s/#.*//
s/[ ^I]*$//
/^$/ d
p
}
‘
Click here to get file:sed_begin_end2.sh
Writing a file with the ‘w‘ command
You may remember that the substitute command can write to a file:
sed -n ‘s/^[0-9]*[02468] /&/w even‘ I used the"&" in the replacement part of the substitution command so that the linewould not be changed. A simpler example is to use the"w" command, which has the same syntax as the"w" flag in the substitute command:
sed -n ‘/^[0-9]*[02468]/ w even‘ Remember - only one space must follow the command.Anything else will be considered part of the file name.The"w" command also has the same limitation as the"w" flag: only 10 files can be opened insed.
Reading in a file with the ‘r‘ command
There is also a command for reading files.The command
sed ‘$r end‘ out
will append the file"end" at the end of the file (address"$)." The following will insert a file after the line with the word"INCLUDE:"
sed ‘/INCLUDE/ r file‘ out
You can use the curly braces to delete the line having the"INCLUDE" command on it:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘/INCLUDE/ {
r file
d
}‘
Click here to get file:sed_include.sh
The order of the delete command"d" and the read file command"r" is important. Change the order and it will not work.There are two subtle actions that prevent this from working.The first is the"r" command writes the file to the output stream. The fileis not inserted into the pattern space, and therefore cannot bemodified by any command. Therefore the delete command does not affectthe data read from the file.
The other subtlty is the"d" command deletes the current data in the pattern space.Once all of the data is deleted, it does make sense that no otheraction will be attempted. Therefore a"d" command executed in a curly brace also aborts all further actions.As an example, the substitute command below is never executed:
#!/bin/sh
# this example is WRONG
sed -e ‘1 {
d
s/.*//
}‘
Click here to get file:sed_bad_example.sh
The earlier example is a crude version of the C preprocessor program.The file that is included has a predetermined name. It would be nice ifsed allowed a variable (e.g"\1)" instead of a fixed file name.Alas,sed doesn‘t have this ability.You could work around this limitation by creatingsed commands on the fly, or by using shell quotes to pass variables intothesed script. Suppose you wanted to create a command that would include afile likecpp, but the filename is an argument to the script.An example of this script is:
% include ‘sys/param.h‘ file.c.new
A shell script to do this would be:
#!/bin/sh
# watch out for a ‘/‘ in the parameter
# use alternate search delimiter
sed -e ‘\_#INCLUDE <‘$1‘>_{
r ‘$1‘
d
}‘
Click here to get file:sed_include1.sh
SunOS and the # Comment Command
As we dig deeper intosed, comments will make the commands easier to follow.Most versions ofsed only allow one line as a comment, and it must be the first line.SunOS allows more than one comment, and these comments don‘t have tobe first.The last example could be:
#!/bin/sh
# watch out for a ‘/‘ in the parameter
# use alternate search delimiter
sed -e ‘\_#INCLUDE <‘$1‘>_{
# read the file
r ‘$1‘
# delete any characters in the pattern space
# and read the next line in
d
}‘
Click here to get file:sed_include2.sh
Adding, Changing, Inserting new lines
Sed has three commands used to add new lines to the output stream.Because an entire line is added, the new lineis on a line by itself to emphasize this.There is no option, an entire line is used, and it must be on its ownline.If you are familiar with many unix utilities, you would expectsed to use a similar convention: lines are continued by ending theprevious line with a"\". The syntax to these commands are finicky, like the"r" and"w" commands.
Append a line with ‘a‘
The"a" command appends a line after the range or pattern.This example will add a line after every line with"WORD:"
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/WORD/ a\
Add this line after every line with WORD
‘
Click here to get file:sed_add_line_after_word.sh
You could eliminate two lines in the shell script if you wish:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘/WORD/ a\
Add this line after every line with WORD‘
Click here to get file:sed_add_line_after_word1.sh
I prefer the first form because it‘s easier to add a new commandby adding a new lineand because the intent is clearer.There must not be a space after the"\".
Insert a line with ‘i‘
You can insert a new line before the pattern with the"i" command:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/WORD/ i\
Add this line before every line with WORD
‘
Click here to get file:sed_add_line_before_word.sh
Change a line with ‘c‘
You can change the current line with a new line.
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/WORD/ c\
Replace the current line with the line
‘
Click here to get file:sed_change_line.sh
A"d" command followed by a"a" command won‘t work, as I discussed earlier.The"d" command would terminate the current actions.You can combine all three actions using curly braces:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/WORD/ {
i\
Add this line before
c\
Change the line to this one
a\
Add this line after
‘
Click here to get file:sed_insert_append_change.sh
Leading tabs and spaces in a sed script
Sed ignores leading tabs and spaces in all commands.However these white space characters may or may not be ignoredif they start the text following a"a,""c" or"i" command.In SunOS, both"features" are available.The/usr/bin/sed command retains white space, while the/usr/5bin/sed strings off leading spaces.If you want to keep leading spaces, and not care about which versionofsed you are using, put a"\" as the first character of the file:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
a\
This line starts with a tab
‘
Adding more than one line
All three commands will allow you to add more than one line.Just end each line with a"\:"
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/WORD/ a\
Add this line\
This line\
And this line
‘
Adding lines and the pattern space
I have mentioned the pattern space before.Most commands operate on the pattern space, and subsequent commandsmay act on the results of the last modification.The three previous commands, like the read file command,add the new lines to the output stream, bypassing the pattern space.
Address ranges and the above commands
You may remember in my last tutorial I warned you that somecommands can take a range of lines, and others cannot.To be precise, the commands"a,""i,""r," and"q" will not take a range like"1,100" or"/begin/,/end/." The documentation states that the read command can take a range, but Iget an error when I try this.The"c" or change command allows this, and it will let you change severallines into one:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/begin/,/end/ c\
***DELETED***
‘
If you need to do this, you can use the curly braces, as that will letyou perform the operation on every line:
#!/bin/sh
# add a blank line after every line
sed ‘1,$ {
a\
}‘
Multi-Line Patterns
Most UNIX utilities are line oriented. Regular expressions are lineoriented.Searching for patterns thatcovers more than one line is not an easy task.(Hint: It will be very shortly.)
Sed reads in a line of text, performs commands which may modify the line,and outputs modification if desired.The main loop of ased script looks like this:
The next line is read from the input file and places in the pattern space. If the end of file is found, and if there are additional files to read, the current file is closed, the next file is opened, and the first line of the new file is placed into the pattern space.
The line count is incremented by one. Opening a new file does not reset this number.
Each sed command is examined. If there is a restriction places on the command, and the current line in the pattern space meets that restriction, the command is executed. Some commands, like "n" or "d" cause sed to go to the top of the loop. The "q" command causes sed to stop. Otherwise the next command is examined.
After all of the commands are examined, the pattern space is output unless sed has the optional "-n" argument.
The restriction before the command determines if the command isexecuted.If the restriction is a pattern, and the operation is the deletecommand, then the following will delete all lines that have thepattern:
/PATTERN/ d
If the restriction is a pair of numbers, then the deletion will happenif the line number is equal to the first number or greater than thefirst number and less than or equal to the last number:
10,20 d
If the restriction is a pair of patterns, there is a variable that iskept for each of these pairs.If the variable is false and the first pattern is found, the variableis made true. If the variable is true, the command is executed.If the variable is true, and the last pattern is on the line, afterthe command is executed the variable is turned off:
/begin/,/end/ d
Whew! That was a mouthful. Hey, I said it was a review. If you haveread the previous lessons, you should have breezed through this.You may want to refer back to this review, because I covered severalsubtle points. My choice of words was deliberate. It covers someunusual cases, like:
# what happens if the second number
# is less than the first number?
sed -n ‘20,1 p‘ file
and
# generate a 10 line file with line numbers
# and see what happens when two patterns overlap
yes | head -10 | cat -n | \
sed -n -e ‘/1/,/7/ p‘ -e ‘/5/,/9/ p‘
Enough mental punishment. Here is another review, this time in a tableformat.Assume the input file contains the following lines:
AB
CD
EF
GH
IJ
Whensed starts up, the first line is placed in the pattern space.The next line line is"CD." The operations of the"n,""d," and"p" commands can be summarized as:
+----------------+---------+------------------------------------------+
|Pattern Next | Command | Output New Pattern New Next |
|Space Input | | Space Input |
+----------------+---------+------------------------------------------+
|AB CD | n | CD EF |
|AB CD | d | - CD EF |
|AB CD | p | AB CD EF |
+----------------+---------+------------------------------------------+
The"n" command may or may not generate output depending upon the existence ofthe"-n" flag.
That review is a little easier to follow, isn‘t it?Before I jump into multi-line patterns, I wanted to cover three more commands:
Print line number with =
The"=" command prints the current line number to standard output.One way to find out the line numbers that contain a pattern is to use:
# add line numbers first,
# then use grep,
# then just print the number
cat -n file | grep ‘PATTERN‘ | awk ‘{print $1}‘
Thesed solution is:
sed -n ‘/PATTERN/ =‘ file
Earlier I used the following to find the number of lines in a file
#!/bin/sh
lines=`wc -l file | awk ‘{print $1}‘ `
Using the"=" command can simplify this:
#!/bin/sh
lines=`sed -n ‘$=‘ file `
The"=" command only accepts one address, so if you want to print the numberfora range of lines, you must use the curly braces:
#!/bin/sh
# Just print the line numbers
sed -n ‘/begin/,/end/ {
=
d
}‘ file
Since the"=" command only prints to standard output, you cannot print the linenumber on the same line as the pattern. You need to edit multi-linepatterns to do this.
Transform with y
If you wanted to change a word from lower case to upper case, youcould write 26 character substitutions, converting"a" to"A," etc.Sed has a command that operates like thetr program.It is called the"y" command.For instance, to change the letters"a" through"f" into their upper case form, use:
sed ‘y/abcdef/ABCDEF/‘ file
I could have used an example that converted all 26 letters into uppercase, and while this column covers a broad range of topics, the"column" prefers a narrower format.
If you wanted to convert a line that contained a hexadecimal number(e.g. 0x1aff) toupper case (0x1AFF), you could use:
sed ‘/0x[0-9a-zA-Z]*/ y/abcdef/ABCDEF‘ file
This works fine if there are only numbers in the file.If you wanted to change the second word in a line to upper case, youare out of luck - unless you use multi-line editing.(Hey - I think there is some sort of theme here!)
Displaying control characters with a l
The"l" command prints the current pattern space.It is therefore useful in debuggingsed scripts. It also converts unprintable characters intoprinting characters by outputting the value in octal preceded by a"\" character.I found it useful to print out the current pattern space, whileprobing the subtleties ofsed.
Working with Multiple Lines
There are three new commands used in multiple-line patterns:"N,""D," and"P." I will explain their relation to the matching"n,""d," and"p" single-line commands.
The"n" command will print out the current pattern space (unless the"-n" flag is used), empty the current pattern space,and read in the next line of input.The"N" command doesnot print out the current pattern space and doesnot empty the pattern space. It reads in the next line, but appends a newline character along with the input line itself tothe pattern space.
The"d" command deleted the current pattern space, reads in the next line,puts the new line into the pattern space, and aborts thecurrentcommand, and starts execution at the firstsed command.This is calledstarting a new"cycle." The"D" command deletes the first portion of the pattern space, up to the newline character, leaving the rest of the pattern alone. Like"d," it stops the current command and starts the command cycle over again.However, it will not print the current pattern space. You must printit yourself, as step 4 mentioned in the beginning of the article,is not executed.If the"D" command is executed with a group of other commands in a curly brace,commands after the"D" command are ignored.The next group ofsed commands is executed, unless the pattern space is emptied.If this happens, the cycle is started from the top and a new line isread.
The"p" command prints the entire pattern space.The"P" command only prints the first part of the pattern space, up to theNEWLINE character.
Some examples might demonstrate"N" by itself isn‘t very useful. the filter
sed -e ‘N‘
doesn‘t modify the input stream. Instead, it combines the first andsecond line, then prints them, combines the third and fourth line, andprints them, etc. It does allow you to use a new"anchor" character:"\n." This matches the new line character that separates multiple lines inthe pattern space.If you wanted to search for a line that ended with the character"#," and append the next line to it, you could use
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
# look for a "#" at the end of the line
/#$/ {
# Found one - now read in the next line
N
# delete the "#" and the new line character,
s/#\n//
}‘ file
You could search for two lines containing"ONE" and"TWO" and only print out the two consecutive lines:
#!/bin/sh
sed -n ‘
/ONE/ {
# found "ONE" - read in next line
N
# look for "TWO" on the second line
# and print if there.
/\n.*TWO/ p
}‘ file
The next example would delete everything between"ONE" and"TWO:"
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/ONE/ {
# append a line
N
# search for TWO on the second line
/\n.*TWO/ {
# found it - now edit making one line
s/ONE.*\n.*TWO/ONE TWO/
}
}‘ file
You can either search for a particular pattern on two consecutivelines,or you can search for two consecutive words that may be split on aline boundary.The next example will look for two words which are eitheron the same line or one is on the end of a line and the second is onthe beginning of the next line. If found, the first word is deleted:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/ONE/ {
# append a line
N
# "ONE TWO" on same line
s/ONE TWO/TWO/
# "ONE
# TWO" on two consecutive lines
s/ONE\nTWO/TWO/
}
}‘ file
Let‘s use the
"D" command, and if we find a line containing
"TWO" immediately after a line containing
"ONE," then delete the first line:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/ONE/ {
# append a line
N
# if TWO found, delete the first line
/\n.*TWO/ D
}‘ file
Click here to get file:sed_delete_line_after_word.sh
If we wanted to print the first line instead of deleting it,and not print every other line, change the"D" to a"P" and add a"-n" as an argument tosed:
#!/bin/sh
sed -n ‘
# by default - do not print anything
/ONE/ {
# append a line
N
# if TWO found, print the first line
/\n.*TWO/ P
}‘ file
Click here to get file:sed_print_line_after_word.sh
It is very common to combine all three multi-linecommands.The typical order is"N,""P" and lastly"D." This one will delete everything between"ONE" and"TWO" if they are on one or two consecutive lines:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/ONE/ {
# append the next line
N
# look for "ONE" followed by "TWO"
/ONE.*TWO/ {
# delete everything between
s/ONE.*TWO/ONE TWO/
# print
P
# then delete the first line
D
}
}‘ file
Click here to get file:sed_delete_between_two_words.sh
Earlier I talked about the"=" command, and using it to add line numbers to a file.You can use two invocations ofsed to do this (although it is possible to do it with one, but that mustwait until next section.The firstsed command will output a line number on one line, and then print the lineon the next line.The second invocation ofsed will merge the two lines together:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘=‘ file | \
sed ‘{
N
s/\n/ /
}‘
Click here to get file:sed_merge_two_lines.sh
If you find it necessary, you can break one line intotwo lines, edit them, and merge them together again.As an example, if you had a file that had a hexadecimal numberfollowed by a word, and you wanted to convert the first word to allupper case, you can use the"y" command, but you must first split the line into two lines, change oneof the two, and merge them together.That is, a line containing
0x1fff table2
will be changed into two lines:
0x1fff
table2
and the first line will be converted into upper case.I will usetr to convert the space into a new line:
#!/bin/sh
tr ‘ ‘ ‘\012‘ file|
sed ‘ {
y/abcdef/ABCDEF/
N
s/\n/ /
}‘
Click here to get file:sed_split.sh
It isn‘t obvious, butsed could be used instead oftr. You can embed a new line in a substitute command, but you mustescape it with a backslash.It is unfortunate that you must use"\n" in the left side of a substitute command, and an embedded new linein the right hand side. Heavy sigh.Here is the example:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
s/ /\
/‘ | \
sed ‘ {
y/abcdef/ABCDEF/
N
s/\n/ /
}‘
Click here to get file:sed_split_merge.sh
Sometimes I add a special character as a marker, and look for thatcharacterin the input stream. When found, it indicates the place ablank used to be.A back slash is a good character, except it must be escaped with abackslash, and makes thesed script obscure. Save it for that guy who keeps asking dumb questions.Thesed script to change a blank into a"\" following by a new line would be:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘s/ /\\\
/‘ file
Click here to get file:sed_addslash_before_blank.sh
Yeah. That‘s the ticket. Or use the C shell and really confuse him!
#!/bin/csh -f
sed ‘\
s/ /\\\\
/‘ file
Click here to get file:sed_addslash_before_blank.csh
A few more examples of that, and he‘ll never ask you a question again!I think I‘m getting carried away. I‘ll summarizewith a chart that covers the features we‘ve talked about:
+----------------+---------+------------------------------------------+
|Pattern Next | Command | Output New Pattern New Next |
|Space Input | | Space Input |
+----------------+---------+------------------------------------------+
|AB CD | n | CD EF |
|AB CD | N | - AB\nCD EF |
|AB CD | d | - CD EF |
|AB CD | D | - CD EF |
|AB CD | p | AB CD EF |
|AB CD | P | AB CD EF |
+----------------+---------+------------------------------------------+
|AB\nCD EF | n | EF GH |
|AB\nCD EF | N | - AB\nCD\nEF GH |
|AB\nCD EF | d | - EF GH |
|AB\nCD EF | D | - CD EF |
|AB\nCD EF | p | AB\nCD AB\nCD EF |
|AB\nCD EF | P | AB AB\nCD EF |
+----------------+---------+------------------------------------------+
Using newlines in sed scripts
Occasionally one wishes to use a new line character in a sed script.Well, this has some subtle issues here.If one wants to search for a new line, one has to use"\n."Here is an example where you search for a phrase, and delete the newline character after that phrase - joining two lines together.
(echo a;echo x;echo y) | sed ‘/x$/ {
N
s:x\n:x:
}‘
which generates
a
xy
However, if you are inserting a new line, don‘t use "\n" - instead insert a literal new line character:
(echo a;echo x;echo y) | sed ‘s:x:X\
:‘
generates
a
X
y
The Hold Buffer
So far we have talked about three concepts ofsed: (1) The input stream or data before it is modified,(2) the output stream or data after it has been modified, and(3) the pattern space, or buffer containing characters that can bemodified and send to the output stream.
There is one more"location" to be covered: thehold buffer orhold space. Think of it as a spare pattern buffer. It can be used to"copy" or"remember" the data in the pattern space for later.There are five commands that use the hold buffer.
Exchange with x
The"x" command eXchanges the pattern space with the hold buffer.By itself, the command isn‘t useful. Executing thesed command
sed ‘x‘
as a filter adds a blank line in the front, and deletes the last line.It looks like it didn‘t change the input stream significantly, but thesed command is modifying every line.
The hold buffer starts out containing a blank line.When the"x" commandmodifies the first line, line 1 is saved in the hold buffer, andthe blank line takes the place of the first line.The second"x" command exchanges the second line with the hold buffer, which containsthe first line. Each subsequent line is exchanged with the precedingline.The last line is placed in the hold buffer, and is not exchanged asecond time, so it remains in the hold buffer when the programterminates, and never gets printed.This illustrates that care must be taken when storing data in the holdbuffer, because it won‘t be output unless you explicitly request it.
Example of Context Grep
One use of the hold buffer is to remember previous lines.An example of this is a utility that acts likegrep as it shows you the lines that match a pattern.In addition, it shows you the line before and after the pattern.That is, if line 8 contains the pattern, this utility wouldprint lines 7, 8 and 9.
One way to do this is to see if the line has the pattern.If it does not have the pattern, put the current line in the holdbuffer.If it does, print the line in the hold buffer, then the current line,and then the next line. After each set, three dashes are printed.The script checks for the existence of an argument, and ifmissing, prints an error. Passing the argument into thesed script is done by turning off the single quote mechanism, insertingthe"$1" into the script, and starting up the single quote again:
#!/bin/sh
# grep3 - prints out three lines around pattern
# if there is only one argument, exit
case $# in
1);;
*) echo "Usage: $0 pattern";exit;;
esac;
# I hope the argument doesn‘t contain a /
# if it does, sed will complain
# use sed -n to disable printing
# unless we ask for it
sed -n ‘
‘/$1/‘ !{
#no match - put the current line in the hold buffer
x
# delete the old one, which is
# now in the pattern buffer
d
}
‘/$1/‘ {
# a match - get last line
x
# print it
p
# get the original line back
x
# print it
p
# get the next line
n
# print it
p
# now add three dashes as a marker
a\
---
# now put this line into the hold buffer
x
}‘
Click here to get file:grep3.sh
You could use this to show the three lines around a keyword, i.e.:
grep3 vt100 Hold with h or H
The"x" command exchanges the hold buffer and the pattern buffer. Both arechanged. The"h" command copies the pattern buffer into the hold buffer.The pattern buffer is unchanged.An identical script to the above uses the hold commands:
#!/bin/sh
# grep3 version b - another version using the hold commands
# if there is only one argument, exit
case $# in
1);;
*) echo "Usage: $0 pattern";exit;;
esac;
# again - I hope the argument doesn‘t contain a /
# use sed -n to disable printing
sed -n ‘
‘/$1/‘ !{
# put the non-matching line in the hold buffer
h
}
‘/$1/‘ {
# found a line that matches
# append it to the hold buffer
H
# the hold buffer contains 2 lines
# get the next line
n
# and add it to the hold buffer
H
# now print it back to the pattern space
x
# and print it.
p
# add the three hyphens as a marker
a\
---
}‘
Click here to get file:grep3a.sh
Keeping more than one line in the hold buffer
The"H" command allows you to combine several lines in the hold buffer.It acts like the"N" command as lines are appended to the buffer, with a"\n" between the lines.You can save several lines in the hold buffer, and print them only ifa particular pattern is found later.
As an example, take a file that uses spaces as the first character ofa line as a continuation character. The files/etc/termcap,/etc/printcap,makefile and mail messages use spaces or tabs to indicate a continuing of anentry.If you wanted to print the entry before a word, you could use thisscript. I use a"^I" to indicate an actual tab character:
#!/bin/sh
# print previous entry
sed -n ‘
/^[ ^I]/!{
# line does not start with a space or tab,
# does it have the pattern we are interested in?
‘/$1/‘ {
# yes it does. print three dashes
i\
---
# get hold buffer, save current line
x
# now print what was in the hold buffer
p
# get the original line back
x
}
# store it in the hold buffer
h
}
# what about lines that start
# with a space or tab?
/^[ ^I]/ {
# append it to the hold buffer
H
}‘
Click here to get file:grep_previous.sh
You can also usethe"H" to extend the context grep.In this example,the program prints out the two lines before the pattern, instead of asingle line.The method to limit this to two lines is to use the"s" command to keep one new line, and deleting extra lines.I call itgrep4:
#!/bin/sh
# grep4: prints out 4 lines around pattern
# if there is only one argument, exit
case $# in
1);;
*) echo "Usage: $0 pattern";exit;;
esac;
sed -n ‘
‘/$1/‘ !{
# does not match - add this line to the hold space
H
# bring it back into the pattern space
x
# Two lines would look like .*\n.*
# Three lines look like .*\n.*\n.*
# Delete extra lines - keep two
s/^.*\n\(.*\n.*\)$/\1/
# now put the two lines (at most) into
# the hold buffer again
x
}
‘/$1/‘ {
# matches - append the current line
H
# get the next line
n
# append that one also
H
# bring it back, but keep the current line in
# the hold buffer. This is the line after the pattern,
# and we want to place it in hold in case the next line
# has the desired pattern
x
# print the 4 lines
p
# add the mark
a\
---
}‘
Click here to get file:grep4.sh
You can modify this to print any number of lines around a pattern.As you can see, you must remember what is in the hold space, and whatis in the pattern space. There are other ways to write the sameroutine.
Get with g or G
Instead of exchanging the hold space with the pattern space, you cancopy the hold space to the pattern space with the"g" command.This deletes the pattern space. If you want to appendto the pattern space, use the"G" command. This adds a new line to the pattern space, and copies thehold space after the new line.
Here is another version of the"grep3" command. It works just like the previous one, but is implementeddifferently. This illustrates thatsed has more than one way to solve many problems.What is important is you understand your problem, and document your solution:
#!/bin/sh
# grep3 version c: use ‘G‘ instead of H
# if there is only one argument, exit
case $# in
1);;
*) echo "Usage: $0 pattern";exit;;
esac;
# again - I hope the argument doesn‘t contain a /
sed -n ‘
‘/$1/‘ !{
# put the non-matching line in the hold buffer
h
}
‘/$1/‘ {
# found a line that matches
# add the next line to the pattern space
N
# exchange the previous line with the
# 2 in pattern space
x
# now add the two lines back
G
# and print it.
p
# add the three hyphens as a marker
a\
---
# remove first 2 lines
s/.*\n.*\n\(.*\)$/\1/
# and place in the hold buffer for next time
h
}‘
Click here to get file:grep3c.sh
The"G" command makes it easy to have two copies of a line.Suppose you wanted to the convert the first hexadecimal number touppercase, and don‘twant to use the script I described in an earlier column
#!/bin/sh
# change the first hex number to upper case format
# uses sed twice
# used as a filter
# convert2uc out
sed ‘
s/ /\
/‘ | \
sed ‘ {
y/abcdef/ABCDEF/
N
s/\n/ /
}‘
Click here to get file:convert2uc.sh
Here is a solution that does not require two invocations ofsed:
#!/bin/sh
# convert2uc version b
# change the first hex number to upper case format
# uses sed once
# used as a filter
# convert2uc out
sed ‘
{
# remember the line
h
#change the current line to upper case
y/abcdef/ABCDEF/
# add the old line back
G
# Keep the first word of the first line,
# and second word of the second line
# with one humongeous regular expression
s/^\([^ ]*\) .*\n[^ ]* \(.*\)/\1 \2/
}‘
Click here to get file:convert2uc1.sh
Carl Henrik Lunde suggested a way to make this simpler.I was working too hard.
#!/bin/sh
# convert2uc version b
# change the first hex number to upper case format
# uses sed once
# used as a filter
# convert2uc out
sed ‘
{
# remember the line
h
#change the current line to upper case
y/abcdef/ABCDEF/
# add the old line back
G
# Keep the first word of the first line,
# and second word of the second line
# with one humongeous regular expression
s/ .* / / # delete all but the first and last word
}‘
Click here to get file:convert2uc2.sh
This example only converts the letters"a" through"f" to upper case. This was chosen to make the script easier toprint in these narrow columns. You can easily modifythe script to convert all letters to uppercase, or tochange the first letter, second word, etc.
Flow Control
As you learn aboutsed you realize that it has it‘s own programming language.It is true that it‘s a very specialized and simple language.What language would be complete without a method of changing the flowcontrol?There are three commandssed uses for this.You can specify a label with an text string followed by a colon.The"b" command branches to the label.The label follows the command. If no label is there,branch to the end of the script.The"t" command is used to test conditions. Before I discuss the"t" command, I will show you an example using the"b" command.
This example remembers paragraphs, and if it contains thepattern (specified by an argument),the script prints out the entire paragraph.
#!/bin/sh
sed -n ‘
# if an empty line, check the paragraph
/^$/ b para
# else add it to the hold buffer
H
# at end of file, check paragraph
$ b para
# now branch to end of script
b
# this is where a paragraph is checked for the pattern
:para
# return the entire paragraph
# into the pattern space
x
# look for the pattern, if there - print
/‘$1‘/ p
‘
Click here to get file:grep_paragraph.sh
Testing with t
You can execute a branch if a pattern is found.You may want to execute a branch only if a substitution is made.The command"t label" will branch to the labelif the last substitute command modified the pattern space.
One use for this is recursive patterns.Suppose you wanted to remove white space inside parenthesis.These parentheses might be nested. That is, you would want todelete a string that looked like"( ( ( ())) )." Thesed expressions
sed ‘s/([ ^I]*)/g‘
would only remove the innermost set.You would have to pipe the data through the script fourtimes to remove each set or parenthesis.You could use the regular expression
sed ‘s/([ ^I()]*)/g‘
but that would delete non-matching sets of parenthesis.The"t" command would solve this:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
:again
s/([ ^I]*)//g
t again
‘
Click here to get file:delete_nested_parens.sh
An alternate way of adding comments
There is one way to add comments in ased script if you don‘t have a version that supports it.Use the"a" command with the line number of zero:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘
/begin/ {
0i\
This is a comment\
It can cover several lines\
It will work with any version of sed
}‘
Click here to get file:sed_add_comments.sh
The poorly undocumented ;
There is one moresed command thatisn‘t well documented. It is the";" command. This can be used to combined severalsed commands on one line.Here is thegrep4 script I described earlier, but without thecomments or error checking and with semicolons between commands:
#!/bin/sh
sed -n ‘
‘/$1/‘ !{;H;x;s/^.*\n\(.*\n.*\)$/\1/;x;}
‘/$1/‘ {;H;n;H;x;p;a\
---
}‘
Click here to get file:grep4a.sh
Yessireebob! Definitely character building.I think I have made my point.As far as I am concerned, the only time the semicolon is usefulis when you want to type thesed script on the command line.If you are going to place it in a script, format it so it is readable.I have mentioned earlier that many versions ofsed do not support comments except on the first line.You may want to write your scripts with comments in them, andinstall them in"binary" form without comments.This should not be difficult. After all, you have become ased guru by now. I won‘t even tell you how to write a script tostrip out comments. That would be insulting your intelligence.
Passing regular expressions as arguments
In the earlier scripts, I mentioned thatyou would have problems if you passed an argument to the script thathad a slash in it. In fact, and regular expression might causeyou problems. A script like the following is asking to be broken someday:
#!/bin/sh
sed ‘s/‘$1‘//g‘
If the argument contains any of these characters in it you may geta broken script:"/\.*[]^$." One solution is to add a backslash before each of those characters:
#!/bin/sh
arg=`sed ‘s:[\/\.\*\[\]\^\$]:&:g <$1
EndOfThisMess
`
sed ‘s/‘$arg‘//g‘
Click here to get file:sed_with_regular_expressions.sh
or
#!/bin/sh
arg=`echo $1 | sed ‘s:[\/\.\*\[\]\^\$\]:\\&:g‘`
sed ‘s/‘$arg‘//g
Click here to get file:sed_with_regular_expressions1.sh
If you were searching for the pattern"^../," the script would convert this into"\^\.\.\/" before passing it tosed.
Command Summary
As I promised earlier, here is a table that summarizes the differentcommands.The second column specifies if the command can have a range or pair ofaddresses (with a 2) or a single address or pattern (with a 1).The next four columns specifies which of the four buffers or streamsare modified by the command. Some commands only affect the outputstream, others only affect the hold buffer.If you remember that the pattern space is output (unless a"-n" was given tosed), this table should help you keep track of the various commands.
+--------------------------------------------------------+
|Command Address Modifications to |
| or Range Input Output Pattern Hold |
| Stream Stream Space Buffer |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
|= - - Y - - |
|a 1 - Y - - |
|b 2 - - - - |
|c 2 - Y - - |
|d 2 Y - Y - |
|D 2 Y - Y - |
|g 2 - - Y - |
|G 2 - - Y - |
|h 2 - - - Y |
|H 2 - - - Y |
|i 1 - Y - - |
|l 1 - Y - - |
|n 2 Y * - - |
|N 2 Y - Y - |
|p 2 - Y - - |
|P 2 - Y - - |
|q 1 - - - - |
|r 1 - Y - - |
|s 2 - - Y - |
|t 2 - - - - |
|w 2 - Y - - |
|x 2 - - Y Y |
|y 2 - - Y - |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
The"n" command may or may not generate output, depending on the"-n" option. The"r" command can only have one address, despite the documentation.
In Conclusion
This concludes my tutorial onsed. It is possible to find shorter forms of some of my scripts.However, I chose these examples to illustrate some basic constructs.I wanted clarity, not obscurity.I hope you enjoyed it.
Other of my Unix shell tutorials can be foundhere.Other shell tutorials can be found atHeiner‘s SHELLdoradoandChris F. A. Johnson‘s Unix Shell Page
This document was originally converted from NROFF to TEXT to HTML.
please forgive errors in the translation.
If you are confused, grab the actual script if possible. No translations occured in the scripts.
Thanks to Carl Henrik Lunde who suggested an improvement to convert2uc1.shThis document was translated by troff2html v0.21 on September 22, 2001 and then manually edited to make it compliant with: