Sed 1 Liner
Sed 1 Liner
FILE SPACING:
# double space a file
sed G
# double space a file which already has blank lines in it. Output file should contain no more than one blank line between lines of text.
sed '/^$/d;G'
# triple space a file
sed 'G;G'
# undo double-spacing (assumes even-numbered lines are always blank)
sed 'n;d'
# insert a blank line above every line which matches "regex"
sed '/regex/{x;p;x;}'
# insert a blank line below every line which matches "regex"
sed '/regex/G'
# insert a blank line above and below every line which matches "regex"
sed '/regex/{x;p;x;G;}'
NUMBERING:
# number each line of a file (simple left alignment). Using a tab (see note on '\t' at end of file) instead of space will preserve margins.
/; s/ *\(.\{6,\}\)\n/\1
/'
# number each line of file, but only print numbers if line is not blank
sed -n '$='
# method 1 # method 2
# IN DOS ENVIRONMENT: convert DOS newlines (CR/LF) to Unix format. Can only be done with UnxUtils sed, version 4.0.7 or higher. The UnxUtils version can be identified by the custom "--text" switch which appears when you use the "-help" switch. Otherwise, changing DOS newlines to Unix newlines cannot be done with sed in a DOS environment. Use "tr" instead -sed "s/\r//" infile >outfile # UnxUtils sed v4.0.7 or higher tr -d \r <infile >outfile # GNU tr version 1.22 or higher # delete leading whitespace (spaces, tabs) from front of each line aligns all text flush left sed 's/^[ \t]*//' # see note on '\t' at end of file # delete trailing whitespace (spaces, tabs) from end of each line sed 's/[ \t]*$//' # see note on '\t' at end of file # delete BOTH leading and trailing whitespace from each line
sed 's/^/
/'
# replaces only 1st instance in a line # replaces only 4th instance in a line # replaces ALL instances in a line # replace the next-to-last case # replace only the last case
# substitute "foo" with "bar" ONLY for lines which contain "baz"
sed '/baz/s/foo/bar/g'
# substitute "foo" with "bar" EXCEPT for lines which contain "baz"
sed '/baz/!s/foo/bar/g'
# change "scarlet" or "ruby" or "puce" to "red"
# reverse order of lines (emulates "tac") bug/feature in HHsed v1.5 causes blank lines to be deleted sed '1!G;h;$!d' # method 1 sed -n '1!G;h;$p' # method 2 # reverse each character on the line (emulates "rev")
sed '/\n/!G;s/\(.\)\(.*\n\)/&\2\1/;//D;s/.//'
# join pairs of lines side-by-side (like "paste")
gsed -r ':a;s/(^|[^0-9.])([0-9]+)([0-9]{3})/\1\2,\3/g;ta'
# add a blank line every 5 lines (after lines 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.) gsed '0~5G' # GNU sed only sed 'n;n;n;n;G;' # other seds
sed 10q
# print first line of file (emulates "head -1")
sed q
# print the last 10 lines of a file (emulates "tail")
sed -e :a -e '$q;N;11,$D;ba'
# print the last 2 lines of a file (emulates "tail -2")
sed '$!N;$!D'
# print the last line of a file (emulates "tail -1") sed '$!d' # method 1 sed -n '$p' # method 2 # print the next-to-the-last line of a file
# for 1-line files, print blank line # for 1-line files, print the line # for 1-line files, print nothing
# print only lines which match regular expression (emulates "grep") sed -n '/regexp/p' # method 1 sed '/regexp/!d' # method 2 # print only lines which do NOT match regexp (emulates "grep -v") sed -n '/regexp/!p' # method 1, corresponds to above sed '/regexp/d' # method 2, simpler syntax # print the line immediately before a regexp, but not the line containing the regexp
sed -n '/regexp/{g;1!p;};h'
# print the line immediately after a regexp, but not the line containing the regexp
sed -n '/regexp/{n;p;}'
# print 1 line of context before and after regexp, with line number indicating where the regexp occurred (similar to "grep A1 -B1")
sed -n -e '/regexp/{=;x;1!p;g;$!N;p;D;}' -e h
# grep for AAA and BBB and CCC (in any order)
sed '/AAA.*BBB.*CCC/!d'
# grep for AAA or BBB or CCC (emulates "egrep")
# print paragraph if it contains AAA (blank lines separate paragraphs) HHsed v1.5 must insert a 'G;' after 'x;' in the next 3 scripts below
sed -e '/./{H;$!d;}' -e 'x;/AAA/b' -e '/BBB/b' -e '/CCC/b' -e d gsed '/./{H;$!d;};x;/AAA\|BBB\|CCC/b;d' # GNU sed only
# print only lines of 65 characters or longer
sed -n '/^.\{65\}/p'
# print only lines of less than 65 characters
sed -n '/regexp/,$p'
# print section of file based on line numbers (lines 8-12, inclusive) sed -n '8,12p' # method 1 sed '8,12!d' # method 2 # print line number 52
# print section of file between two regular expressions (inclusive) sed -n '/Iowa/,/Montana/p' # case sensitive
sed '/Iowa/,/Montana/d'
# delete duplicate, consecutive lines from a file (emulates "uniq"). First line in a set of duplicate lines is kept, rest are deleted --
sed '1,10d'
# delete the last line of a file
sed '$d'
# delete the last 2 lines of a file
sed 'N;$!P;$!D;$d'
# delete the last 10 lines of a file
# method 1 # method 2
sed '/pattern/d'
# delete ALL blank lines from a file (same as "grep '.' ")
# method 1 # method 2
# delete all CONSECUTIVE blank lines from file except the first; also deletes all blank lines from top and end of file (emulates "cat -s") sed '/./,/^$/!d' # method 1, allows 0 blanks at top, 1 at EOF sed '/^$/N;/\n$/D' # method 2, allows 1 blank at top, 0 at EOF # delete all CONSECUTIVE blank lines from file except the first 2:
sed '/^$/N;/\n$/N;//D'
# delete all leading blank lines at top of file
sed '/./,$!d'
sed -n '/^$/{p;h;};/./{x;/./p;}'
SPECIAL APPLICATIONS:
# remove nroff overstrikes (char, backspace) from man pages. The 'echo' command may need an -e switch if you use Unix System V or bash shell sed "s/.`echo \\\b`//g" # double quotes required for Unix environment sed 's/.^H//g' # in bash/tcsh, press Ctrl-V and then Ctrl-H sed 's/.\x08//g' # hex expression for sed 1.5, GNU sed, ssed # get Usenet/e-mail message header
sed '/^$/q'
# get Usenet/e-mail message body
sed '1,/^$/d'
sed -e :a -e 's/<[^>]*>//g;/</N;//ba'
# extract multi-part uuencoded binaries, removing extraneous header info, so that only the uuencoded portion remains. Files passed to sed must be passed in the proper order. Version 1 can be entered from the command line; version 2 can be made into an executable Unix shell script. (Modified from a script by Rahul Dhesi.) sed '/^end/,/^begin/d' file1 file2 ... fileX | uudecode # vers. 1 sed '/^end/,/^begin/d' "$@" | uudecode # vers. 2 # sort paragraphs of file alphabetically. Paragraphs are separated by blank lines. GNU sed uses \v for vertical tab, or any unique char will do
sed '/./{H;d;};x;s/\n/={NL}=/g' file | sort | sed '1s/={NL}=//;s/={NL}=/\n/g' gsed '/./{H;d};x;y/\n/\v/' file | sort | sed '1s/\v//;y/\v/\n/'
# zip up each .TXT file individually, deleting the source file and setting the name of each .ZIP file to the basename of the .TXT file (under DOS: the "dir /b" switch returns bare filenames in all caps)
echo @echo off >zipup.bat dir /b *.txt | sed "s/^\(.*\)\.TXT/pkzip -mo \1 \1.TXT/" >>zipup.bat
Sed takes one or more editing commands and applies all of Them, in sequence, to each line of input. After all the Commands have been applied to the first input line, that line is output and a second input line is taken for processing, and the cycle repeats. The preceding examples assume that input comes from the standard input device (i.e, the console, normally this will be piped input). One or more filenames can be appended to the command line if the input does not come from stdin. Output is sent to stdout (the screen). Thus: cat filename | sed '10q' # uses piped input sed '10q' filename # same effect, avoids a useless "cat" sed '10q' filename > newfile # redirects output to disk For additional syntax instructions, including the way to apply editing commands from a disk file instead of the command line, consult "sed & awk, 2nd Edition," by Dale Dougherty and Arnold Robbins (O'Reilly, 1997; http://www.ora.com), "UNIX Text Processing," by Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly (Hayden Books, 1987) or the tutorials by Mike Arst distributed in USEDIT2.ZIP (many sites). To fully exploit the power of sed, one must understand "regular expressions." For this, see "Mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffrey Friedl (O'Reilly, 1997). The manual ("man") pages on Unix systems may be helpful (try "man sed", "man regexp", or the subsection on regular expressions in "man ed"), but man pages are notoriously difficult. They are not written to teach sed use or regexps to first-time users, but as a reference text for those already acquainted with these tools.
TYPICAL USE:
The preceding examples use single quotes ('...') instead of double quotes ("...") to enclose editing commands, since sed is typically used on a Unix platform. Single quotes prevent the Unix shell from intrepreting the dollar sign ($) and backquotes (`...`), which are expanded by the shell if they are enclosed in double quotes. Users of the "csh" shell and derivatives will also need to quote the exclamation mark (!) with the backslash (i.e., \!) to properly run the examples listed above, even within single quotes. Versions of sed written for DOS invariably require double quotes ("...") instead of single quotes to enclose editing commands.
QUOTING SYNTAX:
For clarity in documentation, we have used the expression '\t' to indicate a tab character (0x09) in the scripts. However, most versions of sed do not recognize the '\t' abbreviation, so when typing these scripts from the command line, you should press the TAB key instead. '\t' is supported as a regular expression metacharacter in awk, perl, and HHsed, sedmod, and GNU sed v3.02.80.
Versions of sed do differ, and some slight syntax variation is to be expected. In particular, most do not support the use of labels (:name) or branch instructions (b,t) within editing commands, except at the end of those commands. We have used the syntax which will be portable to most users of sed, even though the popular GNU versions of sed allow a more succinct syntax. When the reader sees a fairly long command such as this:
VERSIONS OF SED:
# or even
In addition, remember that while many versions of sed accept a command like "/one/ s/RE1/RE2/", some do NOT allow "/one/! s/RE1/RE2/", which contains space before the 's'. Omit the space when typing the command.
OPTIMIZING FOR SPEED: If execution speed needs to be increased (due to large input files or slow processors or hard disks), substitution will be executed more quickly if the "find" expression is specified before giving the "s/.../.../" instruction. Thus:
sed 's/foo/bar/g' filename sed '/foo/ s/foo/bar/g' filename sed '/foo/ s//bar/g' filename
# standard replace command # executes more quickly # shorthand sed syntax
On line selection or deletion in which you only need to output lines from the first part of the file, a "quit" command (q) in the script will drastically reduce processing time for large files. Thus:
# print line nos. 45-50 of a file # same, but executes much faster
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