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sed

Stream editor for parsing and transforming text using pattern matching and substitution operations.

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sed {quiet} {expression} {file} {follow-symlinks} {in-place}

📎 quiet 📎 expression 📎 file 📎 follow-symlinks 📎 in-place

sed {quiet} {expression} {file} {follow-symlinks} {in-place}

Sandbox: execFile · Timeout: 30s

Capabilities

text.transform.substitute

text.transform.delete

text.transform.insert

text.transform.append

text.filter.line

text.process.stream

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description	Aliases
`quiet`	string	No	-	suppress automatic printing of pattern space --debug annotate program execution	`-n`, `--quiet`, `--silent`
`expression`	string	No	-	add the script to the commands to be executed	`-e`, `--expression`
`file`	file	No	-	add the contents of script-file to the commands to be executed	`-f`, `-f`, `-f`, `--file`
`follow-symlinks`	string	No	-	follow symlinks when processing in place	`--follow-symlinks`
`in-place`	string	No	-	edit files in place (makes backup if SUFFIX supplied)	`-i`, `--in-place`
`line-length`	integer	No	-	specify the desired line-wrap length for the `l' command	`-l`, `--line-length`
`posix`	string	No	-	disable all GNU extensions	`--posix`
`regexp-extended`	string	No	-	use extended regular expressions in the script (for portability use POSIX -E)	`-E`, `-r`, `--regexp-extended`
`separate`	string	No	-	consider files as separate rather than as a single, continuous long stream. --sandbox operate in sandbox mode (disable e/r/w commands)	`-s`, `--separate`
`unbuffered`	file	No	-	load minimal amounts of data from the input files and flush the output buffers more often	`-u`, `--unbuffered`
`null-data`	string	No	-	separate lines by NUL characters --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit	`-z`, `--null-data`
`help`	boolean	No	-	display this help and exit	`--help`
`sandbox`	boolean	No	-		`--sandbox`
`version`	boolean	No	-	output version information and exit	`--version`

Artifacts

Type	Description	MIME	Schema	Trust
`text.transformed`	Text after sed transformation	text/plain	-	verified

Contract

Inputs

text.plain

Input text stream to transform

Outputs

text.transformed

Text after applying sed script

Side effects:

Workflow Edges

Produces

text.transformed

Consumes

text.plain

Resource Profile

Resource	Value
CPU	low
Memory	8 MB
Network	none
Disk I/O	low

Examples

Find and replace first occurrence per line

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

Global find and replace all occurrences

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

In-place edit with backup

sed -i.bak 's/foo/bar/g' config.txt

Delete lines matching a pattern

sed '/^#/d' config.conf

Print lines 10-20

sed -n '10,20p' file.txt

Delete trailing whitespace

sed 's/[[:space:]]*$//' file.txt

Darkiros UTILS: Replace multiple space to one

sed -e 's/  */ /g'

Darkiros UTILS: Remove the last char

sed 's/.$//'

Preview a file edit, via substitution.

sudo sed 's/Name=Xfce Session/Name=Xfce_Session/' FILE

Replace the same string more than once per line (g flag)

sudo sed 's/Name=Xfce Session/Name=Xfce_Session/g' FILE

Edit a file (adding -i flag), in-place; changes are made to the file(s).

sudo sed -i 's/Name=Xfce Session/Name=Xfce_Session/' FILE

It can become necessary to escape special characters in your string.

sed -i 's/\/path\/to\/somewhere\//\/path\/to\/anotherplace\//' FILE

Change your sed delimiter to a pipe to avoid escaping slashes.

sed -i 's|/path/to/somewhere/|/path/to/anotherplace/|' FILE

Print 2nd line

sed -n '2p' FILE

Print lines from 2 till 9

sed -n '2,9p' FILE

Print lines starting from one having pattern "any" till line number 17

sed -n '/any/,17p' FILE

Print lines starting from the beginning, quit after printing 3rd line

sed -n 'p;3q'

Print and quit at 5th line

sed -n '5{p;q}' FILE

Print lines starting from the one having pattern "strstart" till the line having pattern "strend"

sed -n '/strstart/,/strend/p' FILE

Print the last line

sed -n '$p' FILE

Replace tabs with 4 spaces (changes are written to file itself)

sed -i 's/\t/    /g' FILE

Replace CRLF with LF (convert DOS/Windows line endings to Linux line endings)

sed -i  's/\r$//g' FILE

Insert CR (carriage return) character before LF (line feed) character (Linux to DOS/Windows line endings conversion)

sed -i 's/$/\r/' FILE

Remove trailing spaces (changes are written to file itself)

sed -i -E "s/\s+$//g" FILE

Remove empty lines (changes are written to file itself)

sed -i -E "/^\s*$/d" FILE

Anonymize original MAC address of an Ethernet device in ifconfig's output (match 6 pairs of hexadecimal numbers with an optional trailing ":")

ifconfig | sed -E "/ether/ s/([0-9a-f]{2}:{0,1}){6}/00:00:00:00:00:00/g"

Rearrange order of %Y,%m,%d in `date`s output by matching groups of characters

date '+%Y-%m-%d' | sed -E "s/([0-9]{4})-([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{2})/\3-\2-\1/"

Documentation

Sed — Stream Editor

Sed is a non-interactive stream editor that performs text transformations on input streams. It's ideal for automated text processing in scripts and pipelines, particularly find-and-replace operations.

Substitution

# Basic substitution (first match per line)
sed 's/pattern/replacement/' file.txt

# Global substitution (all matches)
sed 's/pattern/replacement/g' file.txt

# Case-insensitive
sed 's/pattern/replacement/gi' file.txt

# Replace only on specific lines
sed '3s/pattern/replacement/' file.txt
sed '10,20s/pattern/replacement/g' file.txt

Line Operations

# Delete lines
sed '5d' file.txt               # Delete line 5
sed '/^$/d' file.txt             # Delete empty lines
sed '/^#/d' file.txt             # Delete comments

# Print specific lines
sed -n '5p' file.txt             # Print line 5 only
sed -n '/error/p' file.txt       # Print lines containing 'error'

# Insert and append
sed '2i\inserted line' file.txt  # Insert before line 2
sed '2a\appended line' file.txt  # Append after line 2

In-Place Editing

# Edit file directly (BSD/macOS requires space)
sed -i '' 's/foo/bar/g' file.txt     # macOS
sed -i 's/foo/bar/g' file.txt         # Linux

# Create backup
sed -i.bak 's/foo/bar/g' file.txt

Multiple Commands

# Chain with -e
sed -e 's/foo/bar/' -e '/^$/d' file.txt

# Chain with semicolons
sed 's/foo/bar/; /^$/d' file.txt

# From a script file
sed -f script.sed file.txt

sed