10. The Sed Editor

Contents:
Command-line Syntax
Conceptual Overview
Syntax of Sed Commands
Group Summary of Sed Commands
Alphabetical Summary of Sed Commands

This section presents the following topics:

Command-line syntax
Conceptual overview of sed
Syntax of sed commands
Group summary of sed commands
Alphabetical summary of sed commands

For more information, see the Nutshell Handbook sed & awk .

10.1 Command-line Syntax

The syntax for invoking sed has two forms:

sed [options ] ' command ' file(s)

sed [options ] -f scriptfile file(s)

The first form allows you to specify an editing command on the command line, surrounded by single quotes. The second form allows you to specify a scriptfile , a file containing sed commands. If no files are specified, sed reads from standard input.

The following options are recognized:

-n: Suppress the default output; sed displays only those lines specified with the p command, or with the p flag of the s command.
-e cmd: Next argument is an editing command; not needed unless specifying two or more editing commands.
-f file: Next argument is a file containing editing commands.