Getting started with sed Substitution Delete command Append command Address and address range In-Place Editing Advanced sed commands Regular expressions Additional Options Branching Operation BSD/macOS Sed vs. GNU Sed vs. the POSIX Sed specification

Address and address range

Specific line

$ cat ip.txt
address
range
substitution
pattern
sample

Nth line

$ sed -n '2p' ip.txt 
range

$ sed '3d' ip.txt 
address
range
pattern
sample

Last line
```
$ sed -n '$p' ip.txt 
sample
```

Specific range of lines

$ cat ip.txt 
address
range
substitution
pattern
sample

Range specified is inclusive of those line numbers

$ sed -n '2,4p' ip.txt 
range
substitution
pattern

$ can be used to specify last line. Space can be used between address and command for clarity
```
$ sed -n '3,$ s/[aeiou]//gp' ip.txt 
sbstttn
pttrn
smpl
```

GNU sed

ith line to i+jth line
```
$ sed '2,+2d' ip.txt 
address
sample
```

ith line and i+j, i+2j, i+3j, etc.

$ sed -n '1~2p' ip.txt 
address
substitution
sample

Lines matching regular expression pattern

$ cat ip.txt 
address
range
substitution
pattern
sample
Add Sub Mul Div

Lines matching a pattern

$ sed '/add/d' ip.txt 
range
substitution
pattern
sample
Add Sub Mul Div

$ sed -n '/t/p' ip.txt 
substitution
pattern

$ sed -n '/[A-Z]/ s| |/|gp' ip.txt 
Add/Sub/Mul/Div

Range of patterns

$ sed -n '/add/,/sub/p' ip.txt 
address
range
substitution

$ sed -n '/a/,/e/p' ip.txt 
address
range
pattern
sample

Note

In the second example, it matched two ranges - lines 1,2 and lines 4,5
See Using different delimiters on how to use other characters instead of / for specifying the pattern

GNU sed

Case-insensitive match

$ sed -n '/add/Ip' ip.txt 
address
Add Sub Mul Div

$ sed -n '/add/I,/sub/p' ip.txt 
address
range
substitution
Add Sub Mul Div

Specifying range using both number and pattern

$ cat ip.txt 
address
range
substitution
pattern
sample
Add Sub Mul Div

Line number to line matching pattern

$ sed -n '2,/pat/p' ip.txt 
range
substitution
pattern

Line matching pattern to line number

$ sed '/pat/,$d' ip.txt 
address
range
substitution

GNU sed

Line matching pattern plus number of lines following it

$ sed -n '/add/I,+1p' ip.txt 
address
range
Add Sub Mul Div

0 can be used as starting line number to signal end of range when pattern matches first line of input

$ sed -n '0,/r/p' ip.txt 
address

$ sed -n '1,/r/p' ip.txt 
address
range

$ sed -n '0,/u/p' ip.txt 
address
range
substitution

Negating address range

$ cat ip.txt 
address
range
substitution
1234
search pattern
sample
Add Sub Mul Div

Deleting lines other than address specified

$ sed '/[0-9]/!d' ip.txt 
1234
 
$ sed -n '/[0-9]/p' ip.txt 
1234
  
$ sed '$!d' ip.txt 
Add Sub Mul Div
  
$ sed -n '$p' ip.txt 
Add Sub Mul Div

Search and replace on lines not matching a pattern

$ sed '/ /! s/^/#/' ip.txt 
#address
#range
#substitution
#1234
search pattern
#sample
Add Sub Mul Div

$ sed '/add/,/sub/! s/[aeiou]//gi' ip.txt 
address
range
substitution
1234
srch pttrn
smpl
dd Sb Ml Dv

Contributors

Topic Id: 3120

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