Sed Quick Dev Reference

Sed is a stream editor, this sed cheat sheet contains sed commands and some common sed tricks.

Getting Started

Sed Usage

Syntax

$ sed [options] command [input-file]

With pipeline

$ cat report.txt | sed 's/Nick/John/g'

$ echo '123abc' | sed 's/[0-9]+//g'

Option Examples

-i — sed -ibak 's/On/Off/' php.ini — Backup and modify input file directly

-E — sed -E 's/[0-9]+//g' input-file — Use extended regular expressions

-n — sed -n '3 p' config.conf — Suppress default pattern space printing

-f — sed -f script.sed config.conf — Execute sed script file

-e — sed -e 'command1' -e 'command2' input-file — Execute multiple sed commands

Multiple commands

$ echo "hello world" | sed -e 's/h/H/g' -e 's/w/W/g'
Hello World

Use -e to execute multiple sed commands

Sed script

$ echo 's/h/H/g' >> hello.sed
$ echo 's/w/W/g' >> hello.sed
$ echo "hello world" | sed -f hello.sed
Hello World

Use -f to execute sed script file

Examples

$ sed 's/old/new/g' file.txt
$ sed 's/old/new/g' file.txt > new.txt

$ sed 's/old/new/g' -i file.txt
$ sed 's/old/new/g' -i.backup file.txt

See:

Sed commands

Commands

p — sed -n '1,4 p' input.txt — Print lines 1-4

p — sed -n -e '1,4 p' -e '6,7 p' input.txt — Print lines 1-4 and 6-7

d — sed '1,4 d' input.txt — Print lines except 1-4

w — sed -n '1,4 w output.txt' input.txt — Write pattern space to file

a — sed '2 a new-line' input.txt — Append line after

i — sed '2 i new-line' input.txt — Insert line before

Space commands

n — Print pattern space, empty pattern space, and read next line

x — Swap pattern space with hold space

h — Copy pattern space to hold space

H — Append pattern space to hold space

g — Copy hold space to pattern space

G — Append hold space to pattern space

See also:

Flags

$ sed 's/old/new/[flags]' [input-file]

g — Global substitution

1,2... — Substitute the nth occurrence

p — Print only the substituted line

w — Write only the substituted line to a file

I — Ignore case while searching

e — Substitute and execute in the command line

Loops commands

b label — Branch to a label (for looping)

t label — Branch to a label only on successful substitution(for looping)

:label — Label for the b and t commands (for looping)

N — Append next line to pattern space

P — Print 1st line in multi-line

D — Delete 1st line in multi-line

Misc Flags

/ | ^ @ ! # — Substitution delimiter can be any character

& — Gets the matched pattern

( ) \1 \2 \3 — Group using ( and ).Use \1, \2 in replacement to refer the group

Sed examples

Replacing text

Replace all occurrences of a string

$ sed 's/old/new/g' file.txt

Replace only the nth occurrence of a string

$ sed 's/old/new/2' file.txt

Replace replace a string only on the 5th line

$ sed '5 s/old/new/' file.txt

Replace "world" with "universe" but only if the line begins with "hello"

$ sed '/hello/s/world/universe/' file.txt

Remove "" from the end of each line

$ sed 's/\\$//' file.txt

Remove all whitespace from beginning of each line

$ sed 's/^\s*//' file.txt

Remove comments. Even those that are at the end of a line

$ sed 's/#.*$//' file.txt

Search for text

Search for a string and only print the lines that were matched

$ sed -n '/hello/p' file.txt

Case insensitive search

$ sed -n '/hello/Ip' file.txt

Search for a string but only output lines that do not match

$ sed -n '/hello/!p' file.txt

Appending lines

Append line after line 2

$ sed '2a Text after line 2' file.txt

Append line at the end of the file

$ sed '$a THE END!' file.txt

Append line after every 3rd line starting from line 3

$ sed '3~3a Some text' file.txt

Numbering

Number line of a file (simple left alignment)

$ sed = file.txt | sed 'N;s/\n/\t/'

Number line of a file (number on left, right-aligned)

$ sed = file.txt | sed 'N; s/^/   /; s/ *\(.\{6,\}\)\n/\1  /'

Number line of file, but only print numbers if line is not blank

$ sed '/./=' file.txt | sed '/./N; s/\n/ /'

Count lines (emulates "wc -l")

$ sed -n '$='

Prepending lines

Insert text before line 5

$ sed '5i line number five' file.txt

Insert "Example: " before each line that contains "hello"

$ sed '/hello/i Example: ' file.txt

Deleting lines

Delete line 5-7 in file

$ sed '5,7d' file.txt

Delete every 2nd line starting with line 3

$ sed '3~2d' file.txt

Delete the last line in file

$ sed '$d' file.txt

Delete lines starting with "Hello"

$ sed '/^Hello/d' file.txt

Delete all empty lines

$ sed '/^$/d' file.txt

Delete lines starting with "#"

$ sed '/^#/d' file.txt

File spacing

Double space

$ sed G

Delete all blank lines and double space

$ sed '/^$/d;G'

Triple space a file

$ sed 'G;G'

Undo double-spacing

$ sed 'n;d'

Insert a blank line above line which matches "regex"

$ sed '/regex/{x;p;x;}'

Insert a blank line below line which matches "regex"

$ sed '/regex/G'

Insert a blank line around line which matches "regex"

$ sed '/regex/{x;p;x;G;}'