Does anybody know which version of sed is required to get option -i to work? I am on CentOS5 and I am getting this error.
If you're going to be using -i with sed you're doing it wrong. sed is a stream editor and it should be used to edit streams, not files, as -i wants to do.
If you want to edit a file, you should be using ed. ed is a line editor and it should be used to edit files. IMO, that's the tool you want to be using.
btw, -i is a GNUism. from the wikipedia:
GNU sed added several new features. The best-known is in-place editing of files (i.e., replace the original file with the result of applying the sed program), which was later included in BSD sed too. This feature is nowadays often used instead of ed scripts: for example,
I don't think you can get -i to work then.
I think this other SO question may help you out:
sed -i + what the same option in SOLARIS
Perhaps the solution isn't as nice as sed -i, however.
Related
This is mostly a curiosity question that arose here.
From the man page of GNU sed 4.8 I read
--posix
disable all GNU extensions.
so I understand that if a code like the following works, it means that -i without argument is allowed by POSIX:
sed --posix -i -n '1,25p' *.txt
On the other hand, the same code (with or without --posix) doesn't work for MacOS' BSD sed, because that version expects -i to be followed by an argument.
I can see only two mutually exclusive possibilities:
GNU sed's --posix option allows more than POSIX, which means it bugged and needs a bug report
BSD sed is not POSIX-compliant.
What is the truth?
--posix refers to the sed language itself, not the command line interface:
GNU sed includes several extensions to POSIX sed. In order to simplify writing portable scripts, this option disables all the extensions that this manual documents, including additional commands.
POSIX does not specify -i, so an implementation without it can still be POSIX-conforming.
I'm running GnuWin32 under Windows 10
I'm trying to run the following sed one-liner using the Gnu Bash shell:
sed -f <(sed -E 's_(.+)\t(.+)_s/\1/\2/g_' C:/dictionary.txt) C:/content.txt
The file substitute sed statement converts dictionary entries into sed expressions. The main sed uses them for the content replacements.
It is described in How to awk to read a dictionary and replace words in a file?
dictionary.txt looks like this:
aluminium<tab>aluminum
analyse<tab>analyze
white spirit<tab>mineral spirits
stag night<tab>bachelor party
savoury<tab>savory
potato crisp<tab>potato chip
mashed potato<tab>mashed potatoes
content.txt looks like this:
The container of white spirit was made of aluminium.
We will use an aromatic method to analyse properties of white spirit.
No one drank white spirit at stag night.
Many people think that a potato crisp is savoury, but some would rather eat mashed potato.
...
more sentences
When running GnuWin32/sed in GnuBash-shell under windows 10, I receive the following error message:
syntax error near unexpected token <(s
How to re-formulate the script to run under GnuWin32/sed under windows 10?
with thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/users/2836621/mark-setchell and https://stackoverflow.com/users/5403468/tiw the solution works when using cygwin64
One way is to write the inner sed output to a temporary file first, use it, and then delete it:
sed -r "s_(.+)\t(.+)_s/\1/\2/g_" C:/dictionary.txt>tmp_script.sed
sed -f tmp_script.sed C:/content.txt
del tmp_script.sed
Another way, based on Mr. Mark Setchell's comment, plus little tweak, with cygwin installed,
this work on both bash and batch:
sed -r "s_(.+)\t(.+)_s/\1/\2/g_" C:/dictionary.txt | sed -f /dev/stdin C:/content.txt
This question already has answers here:
sed in-place flag that works both on Mac (BSD) and Linux
(15 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I have got strings stored in two variables (line is current line and new is the replacement). My code looks like this :
sed -i "s#line#new#" output_file
However, this solution does not work on FreeBSD.
Is there any way to modify this code just a bit so it would work?
Yes. Use:
sed -i '' "s#line#new#" output_file
On BSD systems (and macOS too), the sed command's -i option requires a suffix, which may be attached to the -i or a separate argument. However, when the suffix is empty, it must be a separate argument. This is different from GNU sed, where the -i option takes an optional suffix, but if specified, it must be attached to the -i option. Scripts portable between the two (BSD and GNU) therefore must be written with an explicit non-empty suffix attached to the -i option. Note that such scripts may still be unportable to other POSIX systems; the -i option is not standardized (as you can tell from the divergent behaviour).
I am trying replace value in a config file with sed in cshell.
However it gives me the error:
sed: 1: "/usr/local/etc/raddb/mo ...": extra characters at the end of l command
I am trying the following command:
sed -i "s/private_key_password = .*/private_key_password = test/" /usr/local/etc/raddb/mods-available/eap
I have looked at examples of sed to do this but they all look similar with what I am doing, what is going wrong here?
FreeBSD sed requires an argument after -i to rename the original file to. For example sed -i .orig 's/../../' file will rename he original file to file.orig, and save the modified file to file.
This is different from GNU sed, which doesn't require an argument for the -i flag. See sed(1) for the full documentation. This is one of those useful extensions to the POSIX spec which is unfortunately implemented inconsistently.
Right now, the "s/private_key_password = .*/private_key_password = test/" parts gets interpreted as an argument to -i, and /usr/local/etc/raddb/mods-available/eap gets interpreted as the command. Hence the error.
So you want to use:
sed -i .orig "s/private_key_password = .*/private_key_password = test/" /usr/local/etc/raddb/mods-available/eap
You can then check if the changes are okay with diff and remove /usr/local/etc/raddb/mods-available/eap.orig if they are.
I have a file r. I want to replace the words File and MINvac.pdb in it with nothing. The commands I used are
sed -i 's/File//g' /home/kanika/standard_minimizer_prosee/r
and
sed -i 's/MINvac.pdb//g' /home/kanika/standard_minimizer_prosee/r
I want to combine both sed commands into one, but I don't know the way. Can anyone help?
The file looks like this:
-6174.27 File10MINvac.pdb
-514.451 File11MINvac.pdb
4065.68 File12MINvac.pdb
-4708.64 File13MINvac.pdb
6674.54 File14MINvac.pdb
8563.58 File15MINvac.pdb
sed is a scripting language. You separate commands with semicolon or newline. Many sed dialects also allow you to pass each command as a separate -e option argument.
sed -i 's/File//g;s/MINvac\.pdb//g' /home/kanika/standard_minimizer_prosee/r
I also added a backslash to properly quote the literal dot before pdb, but in this limited context that is probably unimportant.
For completeness, here is the newline variant. Many newcomers are baffled that the shell allows literal newlines in quoted strings, but it can be convenient.
sed -i 's/File//g
s/MINvac\.pdb//g' /home/kanika/standard_minimizer_prosee/r
Of course, in this limited case, you could also combine everything into one regex:
sed -i 's/\(File\|MINvac\.pdb\)//g' /home/kanika/standard_minimizer_prosee/r
(Some sed dialects will want this without backslashes, and/or offer an option to use extended regular expressions, where they should be omitted. BSD sed, and thus also MacOS sed, demands a mandatory argument to sed -i which can however be empty, like sed -i ''.)
Use the -e flag:
sed -i -e 's/File//g' -e 's/MINvac.pdb//g' /home/kanika/standard_minimizer_prosee/r
Once you get more commands than are convenient to define with -es, it is better to store the commands in a separate file and include it with the -f flag.
In this case, you'd make a file containing:
s/File//g
s/MINvac.pdb//g
Let's call that file 'sedcommands'. You'd then use it with sed like this:
sed -i -f sedcommands /home/kanika/standard_minimizer_prosee/r
With only two commands, it's probably not worthwhile using a separate file of commands, but it is quite convenient if you have a lot of transformations to make.