原文地址:https://www.systemcodegeeks.com/shell-scripting/bash/linux-sed-examples/?ref=dzone
Sed is basically a stream editor used for modifying files in unix or linux. It provides a nifty way to perform operations on files which can be passed around through pipes. Most people never learn its real power, they just simply use sed to replace text. You can do many things apart from replacing text with sed.
As mentioned earlier, sed is an editor that allows us to use pattern matching to search and replace within a file, or an input stream. This works by using Regular Expressions. By default, the results of any edits we make to a source file, or input stream, will be sent to STDOUT, the standard output. The original file will be unaffected by the edits.
Also the sed command can be incredibly useful when bootstrapping a new server, or machine, as it can easily be scripted. A common use case for sed is to script the editing of configuration files on a new server instance to facilitate the further setup of the needed environment for that machine.
In this article I will describe the capabilities of sed with examples. Consider the below file as input to our examples:
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> cat example.txt |
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I want to learn java. Learn java. Learn java |
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java is the best |
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java forever |
Sed command is mostly used to replace the text in a file. The below sed command replaces the word “java” with “guava” in the file only for the first occurrence in each line:
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> sed 's/java/guava/' example.txt |
Here the “s” specifies the substitution operation. The “/” are delimiters. The “java” is the search pattern and the “guava” is the replacement string.
By default, the sed command replaces the first occurrence of the pattern in each line and it won’t replace next occurences.
Use the /1, /2 etc flags to replace the first, second occurrence of a pattern in a line. The below command replaces the second occurrence of the word “java” with “guava” in a line:
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> sed 's/java/guava/2' example.txt |
The substitute flag /g (global replacement) specifies the sed command to replace all the occurrences of the string in the line:
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> sed 's/java/guava/g' example.txt |
Use the combination of /1, /2, /n and /g to replace all the patterns from the nth occurrence of a pattern in a line. The following sed command replaces from the second occurrence until the nth of the word “java” with the word “guava” in a line:
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> sed 's/java/guava/2g' example.txt |
The /p print flag prints the replaced line twice on the terminal. If a line does not have the search pattern and is not replaced, then the /p prints that line only once.
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> sed 's/java/guava/p' example.txt |
The below image illustrates the execution of the first 5 sed commands:
You can restrict the sed command to replace the string on a specific line number. The below sed command replaces the string “java” only on the second line:
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> sed '2 s/java/guava/' example.txt |
You can specify a range of line numbers to the sed command for replacing a string. Here the sed command replaces the lines with range from 1 to 3. You may use the $ operator to indicate the last line in the file:
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> sed '1,$ s/java/guava/' example.txt |
You can specify a pattern to the sed command to match in a line. If the pattern match occurs, then the sed command looks only for the string to be replaced and if it finds it, then it replaces the string. Here the sed command first looks for the lines which have the pattern “java” and then replaces the word “java” with “guava”.
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> sed '/java/ s/java/guava/' example.txt |
You can delete the lines of a file by specifying the line number or a range of numbers:
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> sed '2 d' example.txt |
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> sed '1,$ d' example.txt |
You can use the sed command to print each line of a file two times:
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> sed 'p' example.txt |
The below image illustrates the execution of the previous 5 sed commands:
You can use any delimiter other than the slash. As an example if you want to change the web url to another url, using too many backslashes makes the sed command look awkward. In this case we can change the delimiter to another character as shown in the below example:
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> sed 's_http://_www_' example.txt |
There might be cases where you want to search for the pattern and replace that pattern by adding some extra characters to it. In such cases & comes in handy. The & represents the matched string:
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> sed 's/java/{&}/' example.txt |
The first pair of parenthesis specified in the pattern represents the \1, the second represents the \2 and so on. The \1,\2 can be used in the replacement string to make changes to the source string. As an example, if you want to replace the word “java” in a line with twice as the word like “javajava” use the sed command as below:
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> sed 's/\(java\)/\1\1/' example.txt |
You can run multiple sed commands by piping the output of one sed command as input to another sed command. Sed provides also an -e option to run multiple sed commands in a single sed command:
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> sed 's/java/guava/' example.txt | sed 's/guava/python/' |
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> sed -e 's/java/guava/' -e 's/guava/python/' example.txt |
Use the -n option along with the /p print flag to display only the replaced lines. Here the -n option suppresses the duplicate rows generated by the /p flag and prints the replaced lines only one time:
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> sed -n 's/java/guava/p' example.txt |
The below image illustrates the execution of the previous 5 sed commands:
You can make sed command to work as similar to grep command. Here the sed command looks for the pattern “java” in each line of a file and prints those lines that have the pattern:
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> grep 'java' example.txt |
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> sed -n '/java/ p' example.txt |
The sed command can add a new line after a pattern match is found. The “a” command to sed tells it to add a new line after a match is found:
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> sed '/java/ a "Add a new line"' example.txt |
The sed command can add a new line before a pattern match is found. The “i” command to sed tells it to add a new line before a match is found:
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> sed '/java/ i "New line"' example.txt |
The sed command can be used to replace an entire line with a new line if a match is found. The “c” command to sed tells it to change the line.
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> sed '/java/ c "Change line"' example.txt |
The sed command can be used to convert the lower case letters to upper case letters by using the transform “y” option. In the below example the sed command transforms the alphabets “av” into their uppercase format “AV”
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> sed 'y/av/AV/' example.txt |
The below image illustrates the execution of the last 5 sed commands:
We tried to present some basic examples of using the sed command. Of course you may always use the man command to find the full functionality of the sed command:
>
man
sed