Now that we know about
regular expressions, we can learn a little about Unix's line
editors
ed
and
sed.
There are about 20 commands in
ed
but we will only learn a few most useful ones.
We can get by with so little knowledge because we will not be using
ed
directly.
A
line
editor is a program that allows us to change a file
one line at a time; we don't normally see the file or even the line
we are changing while editing it.
The alternative is a
full-screen
editor which shows us a screenful of the file while we are making changes.
It may seem odd to learn about line editors when
full-screen editors are available.
However, the line editors and their commands are very powerful;
they will be needed when we build our own tools and commands.
Also, one of the most important features of the full-screen editor
vi
is that it allows us to use
ed's powerful commands.
To edit an existing file, we use:
$ ed cars 726 1 The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a
The
726
is the number of characters in the
cars
file; it was displayed by
ed.
The second number was typed by me; it is the command which makes
the first line the current line.
Mostly,
ed
does commands without displaying anything but when it moves to a
new line it does display it.
Notice that
ed
does not display a prompt;
newcomers find that unsettling.
Another peculiarity of
ed
is that it has only one error message -- which consists of just a question mark!
The most used command in
ed
is the substitute command:
s/devote/waste/
It consists of the letter
s
followed by a character known as the
delimiter;
then comes a string of characters which is to be removed from the line,
followed by the delimiter;
lastly comes a string of characters which is to replace what was removed,
followed again by the delimiter.
For now, will call the two strings respectively the
removal
and
replacement
strings.
We can now see that our example takes
devote
out of the line and puts
waste
in its place.
Notice that
ed
does not waste our time by displaying the new version of the line;
it simply waits for us to enter the next command.
If we want reassurance, the
p
command makes
ed
display the content of the current line:
p
The typical American male wastes more than 1,600 hours a
and we can check we got our command right.
The reason that the delimiter has to be typed three times is that the
first one announces which character will be used in this particular
substitute command.
That means, we could use a different delimiter each time we perform
a substitution.
In practice, most people use slash
(/)
like we have done unless it occurs in one of the strings.
When they don't use slash, they often use a question mark.
Like this:
s?devote?waste?
Here is a more realistic example:
s?/?/../?
In this case, we
had
to use another delimiter to avoid confusion with the slashes
in the removal string
(/) and the replacement string
(/../).
If the string of characters we have asked to be removed does not
occur in the current line,
ed
will display its error message:
s/demote/waste/
?
It will not try to find the string on some other line.
We can make
ed
display the new version of the line after a substitution by adding a
p
to the end of the command.
Characters tacked onto the substitute commands are called
suffixes.
Here is another substitute command:
sXmaleXmanXp
The typical American man wastes more than 1,600 hours a
It has an outlandish delimiter
(X)
and has the
p
suffix to make
ed
display the latest version of the line.
The basic form of the substitute command only makes
one
change to the line.
If we want to change every occurrence in the current line, we need a
g
suffix, as shown here:
s/an/ANO/gp
The typical AmericANO mANO wastes more thANO 1,600 hours a
It is OK to use two suffixes but they must be in the order shown. Notice that only the current line is changed; all the others are left alone.
A very important point is that the replacement string is inserted only
once
for each substitution.
If the
g
suffix is used,
ed
tries to do
more substitutions
from the point it has reached in the current line.
In the example, we have
ANO
three times because
ed
did substitutions for all three occurrences of
an.
The substitute command's "removal string" is actually a regular expression (RE) as this example shows:
s/ANO.*ANO/rhubarb/p
The typical Americrhubarb 1,600 hours a
The way substitutions are done is that
ed
works out which characters are matched by the RE;
it then chops those characters out of the line and puts
the replacement string in their place.
Because REs always match as many characters as possible, our example takes
ANO mANO wastes more thANO
out of the line and puts
rhubarb
in its place.
The next command simply makes the line sensible again:
s/rhubarb/an man wastes more than/p
The typical American man wastes more than 1,600 hours a
Because we can use REs,
ed
does not need separate commands to insert text at the ends
of lines or to split a line in two.
The substitute command is used for all three jobs.
For instance:
s/^/Fact: /p
Fact: The typical American man wastes more than 1,600 hours a
inserts text at the start of a line, and:
s/$/t/p
Fact: The typical American man wastes more than 1,600 hours at
sticks text to the end of the line.
This command would change the first space character on a line into a new-line:
s/ /\ /
Notice that the command has spilled over onto two lines.
The backslash
(\) immediately before the end of the first line tells
ed
that the new-line is part of the replacement string.
Without the backslash,
ed
would take the new-line as the end of the command.
It would assume the command was intended to be:
s/ //
which would simply chop the first space from the line.
If we provide some context, we can change a specific space into a new-line.
The following command affects the space between
n
and
m.
s/n m/n\ m/p man devotes more than 1,600 hours at - Fact: The typical American u p Fact: The typical American man devotes more than 1,600 hours at
Notice the use of the
-
command to go to the line above the current
line, and the use of the
u
command to undo the effect of
the previous change.
If no replacement string is supplied the characters matching the RE are simply removed -- as shown here:
s/......//p The typical American man wastes more than 1,600 hours at s/.$//p The typical American man wastes more than 1,600 hours a
Notice that when it is finding a match for a RE,
ed
starts looking at the
left-hand
end of the line.
That is why the string of dots matched the
first
six characters on the line.
In the second command,
the dollar sign after the single dot made it match the
last
character on the line.
An ampersand (&) in the replacement string has a special meaning.
Let's see it in action before looking at the details:
s/man/(&)/p
The typical American (man) wastes more than 1,600 hours a
The ampersand means: whatever the RE matched in the most recent match.
In the example that was
man,
so the overall effect is to enclose the word in parentheses.
If needed, more than one ampersand can be used,
perhaps to duplicate the matched text.
We can enclose parts of a complex regular expression in escaped parentheses
(\() and (\)).
Doing so,
lets us split the complex regular expression into smaller parts
and refer to the smaller parts individually.
For example:
s/\(.*American\).*\(wastes.*\)/\1 person \2/p
The typical American person wastes more than 1,600 hours a
Here the regular expression matched the whole line.
The match was done in three parts.
The first part was up to and including
American.
The last was from
wastes
to the end of the line.
The middle part was all the characters between the first and last parts,
that is
(man)
(and the surrounding space characters).
In the replacement string,
\1
means the text matched by the RE in the first set of escaped parentheses.
Obviously,
\2
means the text matched by the RE in the second set.
This means that our line of text is replaced with the first and last parts
with
person
(and spaces) sandwiched between.
Notice that we didn't bother to wrap the middle part in escaped parentheses
because we had no need to refer to it later.
This facility is very complex but amazingly useful when building tools to alter complex text. If the need arises, we can refer to up to nine parts of a RE.
This table:
Command | Function --------+------------------------- 1 | go to line one s | substitute p | display the current line - | go back (up) one line u | undo the last change
shows the commands we have already used.
When
ed
was written editors from big computer companies often had as many as
200 commands.
Because so much can be done with the substitute command and regular
expressions,
ed
needs a mere 20 commands.
We will only learn five more of them.
You can read
ed's
man
page if you need to find out about the rest.
Our five new commands are:
Command | Function --------+------------------------- d | delete the current line w | write changes to disk q | quit g | global v | inverse global
Here is the delete command in action:
p The typical American person wastes more than 1,600 hours a d p year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it u p The typical American person wastes more than 1,600 hours a
Notice the delete command causes no output, and that the line after the deleted one becomes the current line. Also, when the deletion is undone, the replaced line becomes the current line.
We can look for a line containing a particular word by using a command like this:
/spends/
tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the
The search starts at the current line; it continues towards the last line of the file and wraps round from the last line to the first one if needed. Is is possible to search from the current line towards line one if needed:
?petrol?
He works to pay for petrol, tolls, insurance, taxes and
This search also wraps round.
These ways of referring to lines:
/spends/ ?petrol?
are known as context addresses; they can be used as if they were line numbers. Notice that we can use REs in context addresses; we aren't limited to fixed text. Note, however, that the delimiters are fixed.
If we do not give
ed
anything where it is expecting a RE it re-uses the last RE
we did give.
This is useful because it saves us typing -- as shown
/[A-Z][a-z][a-z]*/ He works to pay for petrol, tolls, insurance, taxes and // tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the / road or gathering resources for it. The model American puts
The same thing applies to the substitute command too:
s//A/p
road or gathering resources for it. A model American puts
In all the above commands
ed
re-used the RE (which represents a word starting with a capital letter.)
The three searches found:
He,
He
(again) and
The.
The substitute replaced
The
with
A.
Notice how
ed
is engineered to make life easier.
We don't even need to type the slash at the end of a missing RE --
as demonstrated in the last of our searches.
If we put a line number in front of an
ed
command it will affect only the appropriate line of the file.
We can also specify a range of lines by giving two line numbers
separated by a comma.
So this:
11p
would display line 11, and this:
2,6p
would display lines two through to six.
If we had used
d
instead of
p, we would have deleted five lines.
This example shows line numbers in front of the substitute command:
2s/car/automobile/p year to his automobile. He sits in it while it goes and while it 1,4s/ it / his car /gp money to put down on his car and to meet the monthly instalments.
Notice that
ed
makes the last line specified the new current line,
and only displays that line, although it may have changed
all four lines.
This table shows some special line numbers and their meanings:
Symbol | Meaning -------+---------------------------- 1 | the first line $ | the last line . | the current line 0 | the line before the first!
If a line number is left out,
ed
assumes the current line is referred to.
Therefore the following ranges can be used:
Range | Meaning
----------------+----------------------------
1,$ | all lines
,$ | from the current line to the end of the file
1, | from line one to the current line
.-2,.+2 | the five lines centred on the current line
/parks/,/four/ | from the line containing parks
| to the line containing four
For example, this command would display all of the file:
1,$p
But, we needn't see the output!
The trouble with trying to change all lines in a file by using
1,$
is that it will fail if the change cannot be made on at least
one line.
To solve this problem we can use the global command;
it has this format:
g/RE/commands
where
commands
represents any
ed
commands we wish to perform on the lines that match the RE.
Here is an example:
g/car/p
year to his automobile. He sits in his car while his car goes and while it
stands idling. He parks his car and searches for it. He earns the
money to put down on his car and to meet the monthly instalments
In the example,
commands
has been replaced with the
p
command which displays the line.
The net effect of our global command therefore
is to display all lines containing
car.
Notice the format of the last command.
It was
g/RE/p, or, ignoring the slashes,
gREp.
Efficiently performing that command is where
grep
gets its name.
Here is another
g
command:
g/automobile/s//car/g
Here the
g
command is controlling an
s
command.
See how we didn't have to type the RE again;
ed
re-used the previous one which in this case was
automobile.
The advantage of using the global command is that it can safely be used
to change all lines.
There is no problem if none of them contain
automobile.
Do not confuse the
g
at the start of the line with the one
at the end.
The first one means:
all lines containing the RE; the second means:
all possible changes on the line.
If we wish to see the changed lines we can use a command like this:
g/his car/s//it/gp
year to it. He sits in it while it goes and while it
stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the
money to put down on it and to meet the monthly instalments.
It is the
p
suffix on the substitute command that makes the difference.
Often, we wish to delete certain lines. Here is how it is done:
g/ it /d
We used the
d
command to delete the lines containing the RE.
The
v
command is the inverse of
g
in that the commands are
performed on lines that do
not
match the RE.
This command would delete the lines that the previous command did
not delete:
v/ it /d
Since all lines have now been deleted, we must take care not to let
ed
write the changes back to disk.
The
w
command would do that.
Instead, all we have to do is quit, using the
q
command:
q ? q $
Notice, we have to repeat the command to confirm that we are aware that we have altered the file but not written it to disk.
The editor
ed
was designed for interactive use.
Typically, it moves backwards and forwards from line to line in a file randomly,
making changes as directed by the user.
The other line editor,
sed, is a
stream
editor.
It always starts at the first line
and works through, line by line, towards the end of the text.
The changed text is never put back into a file by
sed;
it simply puts the new version of the text onto the standard output.
It is not restricted to working on text in a file -- it can edit
its standard input too.
It is more efficient than
ed
for non-interactive edits and can handle larger files.
Apart from those differences in how the two editors operate, there
is an important difference between
ed
and
sed
commands.
The
ed
commands are done
only on the current
line, unless we specify otherwise.
The
sed
commands are done
on every
line, unless we specify otherwise.
For example, this
ed
command:
s/He/She/
would only affect the current line.
When we use it with
sed
it is attempted on
every
line, as shown:
$ sed 's/He/She/' cars
The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a
year to his car. She sits in it while it goes and while it
stands idling. She parks it and searches for it. He earns the
money to put down on it and to meet the monthly instalments.
She works to pay for petrol, tolls, insurance, taxes and
tickets. She spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the
road or gathering resources for it. The model American puts
in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per
hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry,
people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to
go, and they allocate only three to eight percent of their
society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 per cent.
Ivan Illich
$
As you can see, the first of
sed's arguments is the editing command; the second is a file name.
The quotation marks around the editing command were, strictly speaking,
not necessary.
When we looked at
grep, we saw that it is usually a good idea to wrap REs in quotation marks
so that the shell does not interpret the metacharacters and spaces.
The same reasoning applies to
sed's commands.
A very important point about the previous example is that
cars
is just an input file.
Its contents were not altered.
The edited text
was only sent to the standard output, not put back into the file.
If we need to save the new version of the text, we have to do this:
$ sed 's/He/She/' cars > newcars
$
which redirects the output into a file.
Just as with
ed, we can use line numbers or context addresses.
For example:
$ sed '2s/He/She/' cars > newcars $ sed '2,6s/He/She/' cars > newcars $ sed '/typical/,/parks/s/He/She/' cars > newcars $
So far, we have only done one change at once with
sed.
Usually however, we wish to do several.
Here is how it is done:
$ sed -e 's/car/auto/g' -e 's/petrol/gas/g' cars > newcars
$
The difference is that each editing command is preceded by the
-e
option, otherwise
sed
assumes the second and subsequent arguments are editing commands -- not
file names.
For clarity, we could split a long command over several lines, with each editing command on its own line:
$ sed -e 's/car/auto/g' \ > -e 's/petrol/gas/g' \ > -e 's/tickets/fines/g' cars > newcars $
Don't be confused by the
>; it is the secondary prompt, used by the shell to remind the user that the
command has spilled over onto another line.
It was typed by Unix and not by me.
We could achieve the same effect like this:
$ sed 's/car/auto/g > s/petrol/gas/g > s/tickets/fines/g' cars > newcars $
This last method, without the
-e
options and with only one set of quotation marks, is by far the neatest.
Notice how, in the previous two examples, the editing commands have
been lined up with each other to enhance readability.
The the next example shows probably the most common way
of using
sed.
$ sed '/Man/d > /car/s//auto/g > /petrol/s//gas/g > /tickets/s//fines/g' cars > newcars $
All the commands look just like
ed's
g
command except they don't start with
g!
And they work exactly the same, executing the command after the initial RE
only on the lines that match the RE.
The empty RE in the substitute commands causes the previous
RE (which is
car
in the first substitute command) to be re-used.
The big advantage of this variation is that all the editing commands
begin with the RE, making the whole thing easier to read.
Usually,
sed
writes every line to the standard output after making any changes.
The
-n
option and
sed's
p
command allow us to display only certain lines of a file.
This example displays line four:
$ sed -n '4p' cars
money to put down on it and to meet the monthly instalments.
$
And this example makes
sed
do the same as
grep:
$ sed -n '/model/p' cars
road or gathering resources for it. The model American puts
$
That is, it displays the lines matching the RE (model).
So far, we have only seen
sed
operating on a file.
This example is different because if shows
sed
working on its standard input:
$ date | sed 's/:/ /g' | wc -w
8
$
Here, the standard input comes via a pipe from the
date
command;
sed
changes the colons in the time to spaces and then
wc
counts the words in
sed's output.
This may be a contrived example but it demonstrates a very
common way of using
sed.
The following command looks perfectly straight forward.
sed 's/model/typical/ ' cars
Surely it just changes
model
in its input to
typical?
In fact when we run it, we get the following:
sed: command garbled: s/model/typical/
The problem is that
sed
is very intolerant of extra spaces, and there is one at the end
of the substitute command, just before the final quotation mark.
To make matters worse, the extra space is invisible in
sed's error message.
Also, the error message is usually all
sed
has to say when you get an editing command wrong.
In this set of questions, you have to work out the effect of the given substitute command on this line of text:
Smith, A.B.
Each substitution is to be done on
Smith, A.B.,
not
on the result of the previous substitution.
s/ith/ythe/
Answer
Smythe, A.B.
Hide
s/./-/
Answer
-mith, A.B.
Remember
.
matches any character.
Because matching starts on the left it actually matches our
S
so that is replaced with a single
-.
Hide
s/./-/g
Answer
-----------
Because of the
g
suffix,
ed
makes eleven substitutions:
Substitution | Match | Replacement
-------------+-------+------------
1 | S | -
2 | m | -
3 | i | -
etc
11 | . | -
That is why the replacement string appears eleven times.
Hide
s/.*/-/
Answer
-
The RE (zero or more of any character) matches
Smith, A.B.
which is chopped out and replaced with a single
-.
Hide
s/,/./
Answer
Smith. A.B.
A dot in the replacement has no special meaning!
Hide
s/\./,/g
Answer
Smith, A,B,
The backslash stops the dot being a metacharacter so it simply matches
a literal dot.
The
g
suffix causes two substitutions:
Substitution | Match | Replacement
-------------+-----------+------------
1 | . after A | ,
2 | . after B | ,
Hide
s/m.t/mot/
Answer
Smoth, A.B.
The dot matches any character, but the
m
and
t
provide a context, making the dot match the
i.
Hide
s?m.t?mot?
Answer
Smoth, A.B.
Same command apart from the delimiters
Hide
s/^/Jean /
Answer
Jean Smith, A.B.
Hide
s/$/ (Ms)/
Answer
Smith, A.B. (Ms)
Hide
s/[mi]/X/
Answer
SXith, A.B.
The RE matches the
m
which is the first character (from the left) that is an
m
or an
i.
The RE matches just a single character and that is replaced with the
replacement string (X).
Hide
s/[im]/X/
Answer
SXith, A.B.
The RE again matches the
m
because it is the first character that is an
i
or an
m.
Hide
s/[mi][mi]*/X/
Answer
SXth, A.B.
The first
[im]
matches the
m.
The
[im]*
matches zero or more
is or
ms.
Because the
m
has already been matched, the first possibility for further matching is the
i.
The next possibility is the
t
but that fails.
So, the whole RE matches
mi
which is chopped out and replaced with the replacement string
(X).
Hide
s/[mi]*/X/
Answer
XSmith, A.B.
This is a catch question that demonstrates a common mistake.
The RE matches zero or more
ms or
is.
However, there are none of them before the
S
so nothing is removed from before the
S
and the replacement string is inserted at that place.
Think of this a being like the "no elephants" that can be found in every
classroom.
In general, REs ending with an asterisk have to follow, or be followed
by some context to anchor them somewhere in the line.
The first
[mi]
in the previous question anchored the rest of the RE after the
m.
Hide
s/[A-Z]/X/
Answer
Xmith, A.B.
The RE matches just a single (upper-case) character.
Hide
s/[a-z]/X/
Answer
SXith, A.B.
Hide
s/[a-z][a-z]*/X/
Answer
SX, A.B.
Another way of looking at this one is it consists of an RE that matches one character plus an RE that matches zero or more characters. The result is an RE that matches one or more characters.
Generally, this RE matches a lower case word.
Hide
s/[A-Z]/X/g
Answer
Xmith, X.X.
An earlier question with a suffix.
Hide
s/[^AB]/X/g
Answer
XXXXXXXAXBX
The RE represents a single character that is not an
A
or a
B.
The substitution is done eight more times because of the suffix.
Hide
s/[^,]*/X/
Answer
X, A.B.
The RE matches zero or more characters that are not commas.
Because there is no context, the RE match begins before the
S
and continues to the
h
which is the last character before the comma.
The matched character string is removed and replaced with a single
X.
Hide
s/^[^,]*, .\./X/
Answer
XB.
This is the previous RE again but to the right we have added: a comma,
a space, any single character and a literal dot.
To the left, the first caret
(^) anchors the matching to the start of the line.
Since that is the default, this extra caret makes no difference to
the result.
The longer, matched text is again replaced with replacement string.
Hide
s/.*/& (&)/
Answer
Smith, A.B. (Smith, A.B.)
The RE matches the whole line. Remember the special meaning of
ampersand
(&) in the replacement string
Hide
s/^\([^,]*\), *\(.*\)/\2 \1/
Answer
A.B. Smith
This RE also matches the whole line.
The strings matched by the parts of the RE inside the escaped parentheses
(\() and (\)) are stored away to be used in the replacement string.
The RE in the first set of parentheses matches
Smith.
The RE in the second set matches
A.B.
-- the replacement string, therefore, is the second match, a space and the
first match.
Notice that some parts of the RE
(^
and
,followed by one or more spaces) are outside the parentheses.
These parts take place in the RE matching but "disappear" because they are
not in the replacement string.
Hide
In the following you are asked to work with a file called
Unix.
Here is the
Unix
file for you to download and use.
Use
sed
to display the
Unix
file with:
all occurrences of "Unix" changed to "UNIX".
Answer
sed '/Unix/s//UNIX/g' Unix
OR
sed 's/Unix/UNIX/g' Unix
(Note the
g
suffixes -- needed because a line might have more than one "Unix"
Hide
its present line 17 deleted.
Answer
sed '17d' Unix
Hide
its present lines 17 to 19 deleted.
Answer
sed '17,19d' Unix
Hide
all lines containing "and" deleted.
Answer
sed '/and/d' Unix
Hide
all occurrences of "Unix" changed to "UNIX" and its present lines 17 to 19 deleted.
Answer
sed '/Unix/s//UNIX/g 17,19d' Unix
OR (more typing):
sed -e 's/Unix/UNIX/g' -e '17,19d' Unix
Hide
only line 17 shown
Answer
sed -n '17p' Unix
Hide
its present line 17 displayed twice.
Answer
sed '17p' Unix
Hide
Smythe, A.B.
-mith, A.B.
Remember
.
matches any character.
Because matching starts on the left it actually matches our
S
so that is replaced with a single
-.
-----------
Because of the
g
suffix,
ed
makes eleven substitutions:
Substitution | Match | Replacement
-------------+-------+------------
1 | S | -
2 | m | -
3 | i | -
etc
11 | . | -
That is why the replacement string appears eleven times.
-
The RE (zero or more of any character) matches
Smith, A.B.
which is chopped out and replaced with a single
-.
Smith. A.B.
A dot in the replacement has no special meaning!
Smith, A,B,
The backslash stops the dot being a metacharacter so it simply matches
a literal dot.
The
g
suffix causes two substitutions:
Substitution | Match | Replacement
-------------+-----------+------------
1 | . after A | ,
2 | . after B | ,
Smoth, A.B.
The dot matches any character, but the
m
and
t
provide a context, making the dot match the
i.
Smoth, A.B.
Same command apart from the delimiters
Jean Smith, A.B.
Smith, A.B. (Ms)
SXith, A.B.
The RE matches the
m
which is the first character (from the left) that is an
m
or an
i.
The RE matches just a single character and that is replaced with the
replacement string (X).
SXith, A.B.
The RE again matches the
m
because it is the first character that is an
i
or an
m.
SXth, A.B.
The first
[im]
matches the
m.
The
[im]*
matches zero or more
is or
ms.
Because the
m
has already been matched, the first possibility for further matching is the
i.
The next possibility is the
t
but that fails.
So, the whole RE matches
mi
which is chopped out and replaced with the replacement string
(X).
XSmith, A.B.
This is a catch question that demonstrates a common mistake.
The RE matches zero or more
ms or
is.
However, there are none of them before the
S
so nothing is removed from before the
S
and the replacement string is inserted at that place.
Think of this a being like the "no elephants" that can be found in every
classroom.
In general, REs ending with an asterisk have to follow, or be followed
by some context to anchor them somewhere in the line.
The first
[mi]
in the previous question anchored the rest of the RE after the
m.
Xmith, A.B.
The RE matches just a single (upper-case) character.
SXith, A.B.
SX, A.B.
Another way of looking at this one is it consists of an RE that matches one character plus an RE that matches zero or more characters. The result is an RE that matches one or more characters.
Generally, this RE matches a lower case word.
Xmith, X.X.
An earlier question with a suffix.
XXXXXXXAXBX
The RE represents a single character that is not an
A
or a
B.
The substitution is done eight more times because of the suffix.
X, A.B.
The RE matches zero or more characters that are not commas.
Because there is no context, the RE match begins before the
S
and continues to the
h
which is the last character before the comma.
The matched character string is removed and replaced with a single
X.
XB.
This is the previous RE again but to the right we have added: a comma,
a space, any single character and a literal dot.
To the left, the first caret
(^) anchors the matching to the start of the line.
Since that is the default, this extra caret makes no difference to
the result.
The longer, matched text is again replaced with replacement string.
Smith, A.B. (Smith, A.B.)
The RE matches the whole line. Remember the special meaning of
ampersand
(&) in the replacement string
A.B. Smith
This RE also matches the whole line.
The strings matched by the parts of the RE inside the escaped parentheses
(\() and (\)) are stored away to be used in the replacement string.
The RE in the first set of parentheses matches
Smith.
The RE in the second set matches
A.B.
-- the replacement string, therefore, is the second match, a space and the
first match.
Notice that some parts of the RE
(^
and
,followed by one or more spaces) are outside the parentheses.
These parts take place in the RE matching but "disappear" because they are
not in the replacement string.
sed '/Unix/s//UNIX/g' Unix
OR
sed 's/Unix/UNIX/g' Unix
(Note the
g
suffixes -- needed because a line might have more than one "Unix"
sed '17d' Unix
sed '17,19d' Unix
sed '/and/d' Unix
sed '/Unix/s//UNIX/g 17,19d' Unix
OR (more typing):
sed -e 's/Unix/UNIX/g' -e '17,19d' Unix
sed -n '17p' Unix
sed '17p' Unix