I dont find the way to use flag with sed and matching pattern.
I'm trying to us the i flag. But I don't understand how it works.
$ sed -i '' -n '/xxx.xxx#xxx.fr/i d' res.txt
sed: 1: "/xxx.xxx#xxx.fr/i d": command i expects \ followed by text
So I want to match xxx.xxx#xxx.fr And XXX.XXX#XXX.FR
The -i '' is only for --in-file (without cache) the d is for delete.
So how can I use flag and eventually multiple of them ? In the documentation I've found it was that way but it seems not to work at all.
I would use Perl - its regexes and options are far more orthogonal and consistent than all the sed versions across platforms:
perl -i -ne '/XXX.XXX.fr/i || print' res.txt
-i means "in-place" editing
-n means execute a loop around input lines like awk or sed
-e means execute following script
Related
From some online reading, it seems that sed's -e flag usage is to note a sed script
e.g:
sed -i -e 's/default_language/language/g' "$CONF_FILE"
but from self-testing and some online search, it seems that this line should also work:
sed -i 's/default_language/language/g' "$CONF_FILE"
So what do I need -e for? Is it only useful for cases I'd like to write several scripts in a row? That can also be managed with ;.
According to the manual:
If no -e, --expression, -f, or --file option is given, then the first non-option argument is taken as the sed
script to interpret. All remaining arguments are names of input files; if no input files are specified, then
the standard input is read.
As you already mentioned, -e may be used for multiple commands.
sed 'cmd1; cmd2'
sed -e 'cmd1; cmd2'
sed -e 'cmd1' -e 'cmd2'
I am trying to replace all the patterns
s#_coded_block[#] with s#_coded_block_# in myfile. I looked online on how to replace patterns with groupings and my command is:
sed -i -E 's/s\([0-9]*\)_coded_block\[\([0-9]*\)\]/s\1_coded_block_\2/g' myfile
However, I am getting
invalid reference \2 on `s'
command's RHS when I execute this command.
With the -E option, you don't need backslashes before the capturing parentheses:
sed -i -E 's/s([0-9]*)_coded_block\[([0-9]*)\]/s\1_coded_block_\2/g' myfile
You might want one-or-more digits, in which case you use + instead of *. If you decide to drop the -E, your original code should work, though if you want at least one digit, you need to write \{1,\}:
sed -i 's/s\([0-9]\{1,\}\)_coded_block\[\([0-9]\{1,\}\)\]/s\1_coded_block_\2/g' myfile
The -i notation shown only works reliably with GNU sed. BSD (macOS or Mac OS X) sed would treat the -E in the first command line as the suffix (in the second, you'd get a complaint about m not being a valid sed command because the script would be treated as the suffix and the m of myfile would be an erroneous sed command. You'd use -i '' to back up (overwrite) a file with no suffix. If you want portable code, use -i.bak which creates a backup file with both variants — the .bak must be attached to the -i for GNU sed.
This question already has answers here:
Combining two sed commands
(2 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
I have 4 different sed commands which I am running on a file. And in order to tune in the performance of these 4 commands, I want to combine them into one.
Each command is a complex command with -E switch. Searched many many forums but could not get my specific answer.
sed -i -E ':a; s/('"$search_str"'X*)[^X&]/\1X/; ta' "$newfile"
sed -i -E '/[<]ExtData[>?" "]/{:a; /Name=/{/Name="'"$nvp_list_ORed"'"/!b}; /Value=/bb; n; ba; :b; s/(Value="X*)[^X"]/\1X/; tb; }' "$newfile"
sed -i -E ':a; s/('"$search_str1"'X*)[^X\<]/\1X/; ta' "$newfile"
sed -i -E ':a; s/('"$search_str2"'X*)[^X\/]/\1X/; ta' "$newfile"
And i want to combine them say something like
sed -i -E 'command1' -e 'command2' -e 'command3' -e 'command4'
"$newfile"
But it is not working. Because may be -E and -e can't be combine.
Please let me know.
Thanks !! Puneet
-E means "extended regex" and is a standalone flag, -e means "expression" and must be followed by a sed expression.
You can combine them, but each of your sed expression must be preceded by a -e if you want multiple of them, which isn't the case of your first one.
sed -i -E -e 'command1' -e 'command2' -e 'command3' -e 'command4' "$newfile"
A second option is to write each command in the same expression :
sed -i -E 'command1;command2;command3;command4' "$newfile"
However, since you're using labels I wouldn't rely on this option ; some implementations may not support it as John1024 pointed out.
Lastly, as mentionned by Mad Physicist, you can write your sed expressions to a file which you'll reference through the -f option.
The file must contain a single sed expression by line (you can write multiline expressions by suffixing each line but the last by a \, thus escaping the line-feed).
Simply pipe them:
sed -E 'A' file | sed -E 'B' | ... >file.tmp && mv file.tmp file
As #Aaron observed, if you want to give multiple separate expressions to sed, you must designate them as -e options; they will be combined. You can also combine a bunch of expressions into one by separating the pieces with semicolons.
Your case is a bit special however: your particular expressions use labels and branch instructions, with one of the label names (a) repeated in each expression. In order to combine these, each label should be distinct, and each branch (either conditional and absolute) should specify the correct label. That would look something like this:
sed -i -E \
-e ':a1; s/('"$search_str"'X*)[^X&]/\1X/; ta1' \
-e '/[<]ExtData[>?" "]/ {:a2; /Name=/ {/Name="'"$nvp_list_ORed"'"/ !b}; /Value=/ bb2; n; ba2; :b2; s/(Value="X*)[^X"]/\1X/; tb2; }' \
-e ':a3; s/('"$search_str1"'X*)[^X\<]/\1X/; ta3' \
-e ':a4; s/('"$search_str2"'X*)[^X\/]/\1X/; ta4' \
"$newfile"
Do note that even with proper quoting from a shell perspsective, which you appear to have, your approach will not do what you expect if the value of any of the interpolated shell variables contains a regex metacharacter.
Warning: It is not always possible to combine multiple sed scripts into a single one without change. Sometimes you might have to do a redesign of your algorithm.
Sed makes has two concepts of memory. The pattern space and the hold space. Concatenation is only working if these two spaces are identical in both sed commands. Below you find an example where the pattern space changes:
$ echo aa | sed -e 's/./&\n/' | sed -e '1s/a/b/g'
b
a
$ echo aa | sed -e 's/./&\n/' -e '1s/a/b/g'
b
b
$ echo aa | gsed -e 's/./&\n/;1s/a/b/g'
b
b
In the original pipeline, the first sed command works on the pattern space aa, while the second script's pattern space is only a.
So, disclaimer: I am pretty new to using bash and zsh, so there is a chance the answer is really simple. Nonetheless. I checked previous postings and couldn't find anything. (edit: I have tried this in both bash and zsh shells- same problem.)
I have a directory with many files and am trying to remove the first line from each file.
So say the directory contains: file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt ... etc.
I am using the sed command (non-GNU):
sed -i -e "1d" *.txt
For some reason, this is only removing the first line of the first file. I thought that the *.txt would affect all files matching the pattern in directory. Strangely, it is creating the file duplicates with -e appended, but both the duplicate and original are the same.
I tried this with other commands (e.g. ls *.txt) and it works fine. Is there something about sed I am missing?
Thank you in advance.
Different versions of sed in differing operating systems support various parameters.
OpenBSD (5.4) sed
The -i flag is unavailable. You can use the following /bin/sh syntax:
for i in *.txt
do
f=`mktemp -p .`
sed -e "1d" "${i}" > "${f}" && mv -- "${f}" "${i}"
done
FreeBSD (11-CURRENT) sed
The -i flag requires an extension, even if it's empty. Thus must be written as sed -i "" -e "1d" *.txt
GNU sed
This looks to see if the argument following -i is another option (or possibly a command). If so, it assumes an in-place modification. If it appears to be a file extension such as ".bak", it will rename the original with the ".bak" and then modify it into the original file's name.
There might be other variations on other platforms, but those are the three I have at hand.
use it without -e !
for one file use:
sed -i '1d' filename
for all files use :
sed -i '1d' *.txt
or
files=/path/to/files/*.extension ; for var in $files ; do sed -i '1d' $var ; done
.for me i use ubuntu and debian based systems , this method is working for me 100% , but for other platformes i'm not sure , so this is other method :
replace first line with emty pattern , and remove empty lines , (double commands):
for files in $(ls /path/to/files/*.txt); do sed -i "s/$(head -1 "$files")//g" "$files" ; sed -i '/^$/d' "$files" ; done
Note: if your files contain splash '/' , then it will give error , so in this case sed command should look like this ( sed -i "s[$(head -1 "$files")[[g" )
hope that's what you're looking for :)
The issue here is that the line number isn't reset when sed opens a new file, so 1 only matches the first line of the first file.
One solution is to use a shell loop, calling sed once for each file. Gumnos' answer shows how to do this in the most widely compatible way, although if you have a version of sed supporting the -i flag, you could do this instead:
for i in *.txt; do
sed -i.bak '1d' "$i"
done
It is possible to avoid creating the backup file by passing an empty suffix but personally, I don't think it's such a bad thing. One day you'll be grateful for it!
It appears that you're not working with GNU tools but if you were, I would recommend using GNU awk for this task. The variable FNR is useful here, as it keeps track of the record number for each file individually, allowing you to do this:
gawk -i inplace 'FNR>1' *.txt
Using the inplace extension, this allows you to remove the first line from each of your files, by only printing the lines where FNR is greater than 1.
Testing it out:
$ seq 5 > file1
$ seq 5 > file2
$ gawk -i inplace 'FNR>1' file1 file2
$ cat file1
2
3
4
5
$ cat file2
2
3
4
5
The last argument you are passing to the Sed is the problem
try something like this.
var=(`find *txt`)
for file in "${var[#]}"
do
sed -i -e 1d $file
done
This did the trick for me.
I'd like edit a file with sed on OS X. I'm using the following command:
sed 's/oldword/newword/' file.txt
The output is sent to the terminal. file.txt is not modified. The changes are saved to file2.txt with this command:
sed 's/oldword/newword/' file1.txt > file2.txt
However I don't want another file. I just want to edit file1.txt. How can I do this?
I've tried the -i flag. This results in the following error:
sed: 1: "file1.txt": invalid command code f
You can use the -i flag correctly by providing it with a suffix to add to the backed-up file. Extending your example:
sed -i.bu 's/oldword/newword/' file1.txt
Will give you two files: one with the name file1.txt that contains the substitution, and one with the name file1.txt.bu that has the original content.
Mildly dangerous
If you want to destructively overwrite the original file, use something like:
sed -i '' 's/oldword/newword/' file1.txt
^ note the space
Because of the way the line gets parsed, a space is required between the option flag and its argument because the argument is zero-length.
Other than possibly trashing your original, I’m not aware of any further dangers of tricking sed this way. It should be noted, however, that if this invocation of sed is part of a script, The Unix Way™ would (IMHO) be to use sed non-destructively, test that it exited cleanly, and only then remove the extraneous file.
I've similar problem with MacOS
sed -i '' 's/oldword/newword/' file1.txt
doesn't works, but
sed -i"any_symbol" 's/oldword/newword/' file1.txt
works well.
The -i flag probably doesn't work for you, because you followed an example for GNU sed while macOS uses BSD sed and they have a slightly different syntax.
All the other answers tell you how to correct the syntax to work with BSD sed. The alternative is to install GNU sed on your macOS with:
brew install gsed
and then use it instead of the sed version shipped with macOS (note the g prefix), e.g:
gsed -i 's/oldword/newword/' file1.txt
If you want GNU sed commands to be always portable to your macOS, you could prepend "gnubin" directory to your path, by adding something like this to your .bashrc/.zshrc file (run brew info gsed to see what exactly you need to do):
export PATH="/usr/local/opt/gnu-sed/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"
and from then on the GNU sed becomes your default sed and you can simply run:
sed -i 's/oldword/newword/' file1.txt
sed -i -- "s/https/http/g" file.txt
You can use -i'' (--in-place) for sed as already suggested. See: The -i in-place argument, however note that -i option is non-standard FreeBSD extensions and may not be available on other operating systems. Secondly sed is a Stream EDitor, not a file editor.
Alternative way is to use built-in substitution in Vim Ex mode, like:
$ ex +%s/foo/bar/g -scwq file.txt
and for multiple-files:
$ ex +'bufdo!%s/foo/bar/g' -scxa *.*
To edit all files recursively you can use **/*.* if shell supports that (enable by shopt -s globstar).
Another way is to use gawk and its new "inplace" extension such as:
$ gawk -i inplace '{ gsub(/foo/, "bar") }; { print }' file1
This creates backup files. E.g. sed -i -e 's/hello/hello world/' testfile for me, creates a backup file, testfile-e, in the same dir.
You can use:
sed -i -e 's/<string-to-find>/<string-to-replace>/' <your-file-path>
Example:
sed -i -e 's/Hello/Bye/' file.txt
This works flawless in Mac.
If you need to substitute more than one different words:
sed -i '' -e 's/_tools/tools/' -e 's/_static/static/' test.txt