Sed-Stream-Editor/C2/Sed-special-characters/English
VISUAL CUE | NARRATION |
Slide 1: | Welcome to the spoken tutorial on Sed special characters. |
Slide 2:
Learning Objectives |
In this tutorial, we will learn about:
Also, how to use special characters such as
in Sed command. |
Slide 3:
System requirements |
This tutorial is recorded using Ubuntu Linux OS version 18.04 |
Slide 4:
Prerequisites |
To follow this tutorial, you should know basics of Linux.
If not, for relevant tutorials please visit our website. |
Slide 5:
Code files – IndianBooks.txt |
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Open the terminal | Open the terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T keys simultaneously.
Press the Enter key after every command. |
> cd Downloads
> cat IndianBooks |
Let us see the content of the file IndianBooks.txt which I have saved in the Downloads folder.
Type cat space IndianBooks.txt In this tutorial, I’ll be using this file for demonstration. |
Print command | First we will learn about print command. |
>sed ‘p’ IndianBooks.txt
Highlight p |
Type
sed space within single quotes p space IndianBooks.txt 'p' is the command for printing the data from the pattern buffer. In the output, we can see that each line is displayed twice. Recall the workflow of Sed. By default, Sed prints the content of the pattern buffer. We have included the print option 'p' in the above command. So it prints twice. |
>sed -n ‘p’ IndianBooks.txt
Highlight -n |
Use -n to suppress the default printing of the pattern buffer.
Type the command with -n as shown. -n (hyphen n) is the Sed command line flag. |
Address range
> sed -n ‘5p’ IndianBooks.txt Highlight 5p |
Let us see how Sed operates on a particular line.
Type the command as shown. 5p prints the fifth line of the input file IndianBooks.txt |
> sed -n ‘3,6 p’ IndianBooks.txt
Highlight 3,6p |
Type the command as shown.
Here we have specified an address range in the Sed command. This will print from the 3rd line to the 6th line . |
$ command | Next we will see how to use the special character dollar($) in Sed command. |
> sed -n ‘$p’ IndianBooks.txt
Highlight $ |
This command with a special character dollar($) prints the last line of the file. |
>sed -n ‘4, $p’ IndianBooks.txt | We can use the dollar($) character to specify the address range.
Type the command as shown. This command prints from the 4th line to the last line. |
+ operator
> sed -n ‘3, +3p’ IndianBooks.txt |
Next we will see how to use plus(+) operator in the address range.
Type the command with plus(+) operator as shown. This command prints the next 3 lines starting from the third line. |
~ operator
> sed -n ‘1~2p’ IndianBooks.txt |
We can use the tilde(~) operator to specify the address range.
For example, this command prints the odd line numbers from the file. That is, it starts from line number 1 and processes every second line. |
>sed -n ‘2~2 p’ IndianBooks.txt | Type this command to print only the even numbers from the file. |
Pattern range
>sed -n ‘ /Gandhi/ p’ IndianBooks.txt Highlight between forward slash |
Next we will see how Sed command handles the pattern range.
Type sed space hyphen n space within single quotes forward slash Gandhi forward slash p space IndianBooks.txt Note that pattern has to be specified within forward slashes. Sed operates on each line and prints only those lines that match the string Gandhi. |
> sed -n’/Gandhi/!p’ IndianBooks.txt
Highlight ! operator |
We can reverse the above command.
We can print the lines that don’t contain the word Gandhi. Use negation operator as shown here and see the output. |
Next we will see about a few other special characters used in regular expressions. | |
Character Description
^ Matches the beginning of the line $ Matches the end of the line . Matches any single character
[ ] Matches all the characters inside the [ ] |
Caret matches the beginning of the line Dollar matches the end of the line Dot matches any single character Asterisk matches zero or more occurrences Square brackets matches all the characters inside it |
Let us see how these special characters work with the sed commands. | |
(^) start of line
> sed -n ‘/^1/ p’ IndianBooks.txt |
Type the command as shown.
This command prints all the lines that starts with the pattern ‘1’ (one). The caret(^) symbol matches the start of a line. |
($) end of line
>sed -n ‘/3$/ p’ IndianBooks.txt |
In this command, the end of the line pattern is denoted by the dollar($) symbol.
This command prints all the lines that end with the pattern ‘3’. |
(.) single character
>sed -n ‘/...8$/ p’ IndianBooks.txt |
Type the command as shown.
Dot matches any single character. This command prints all the four letter text that ends with 8. |
(*)
>sed -n '/Ind*/ p' IndianBooks.txt |
Let us see an example for asterisks.
Asterisks (*) matches the zero or more occurrence of the preceding character. This prints the line that matches "India", "Indira" and so on. |
= (equal to) | Next we will see how to use equal to command. |
>sed ‘=’ IndianBooks.txt
Highlight = |
Type as shown.
Equal to command is used to print line numbers in standard output. We can see the line number followed by the content. |
> sed ‘1,5=’ IndianBooks.txt | Type the command as shown.
This prints the line numbers for the first 5 lines and the remaining without the line numbers. |
>sed ‘/Nehru/ =’ IndianBooks.txt | This command prints the line numbers with respect to the pattern match. |
>sed -n '/My/ =' IndianBooks.txt | How to find out the line numbers that contain a pattern?
Type the command as shown. This prints only the line numbers of the line that has the pattern ‘My’ |
sed -n '$=' IndianBooks.txt | Next let us find the number of lines in a file.
Type the command as shown and see the output. |
& command:
sed 's/^.*/(&)/' IndianBooks.txt sed 's/^.*dhi/(&)/' IndianBooks.txt |
Next we will see how to use ampersand in Sed command.
Type the command. When ampersand is used in the search string, it replaces with whatever text matches the original string. This command inserts parentheses in all the lines. Let’s see another example. This command puts parentheses around the matched text which ends with ‘dhi’. |
Slide:
[] regular expression: Character class Description [:alnum:] Alphanumeric [a-z A-Z 0-9] [:alpha:] Alphabetic [a-z A-Z] [:blank:] Spaces or tabs [:digit:] Numeric digits [0-9] [:lower:] Lower-case [a-z] [:space:] Whitespace [:upper:] Upper-case [A-Z] |
The square bracket regular expression has some more additional options as shown here.
Let us see a few examples on how to use these in regular expression. |
>sed 's/[Tt]ruth/TRUTH/' IndianBooks.txt
Highlight the output |
Type the command as shown. In regular expression terminology, a character set is represented by square brackets. This command matches the pattern "Truth" with capital T and small ‘t’. Then it replaces the word with TRUTH, all in capital letters. |
sed 's/19[0-9]*/****/' IndianBooks.txt Highlight 19[0-9] Highlight **** Highlight the output |
Next we will see how the character range is specified with hyphen.
Type the command as shown. Note this regular expression. It should match with the string starting with nineteen and any character within the range 0 to 9. Then it is replaced with 4 asterisks. In the output, we can see all the published years are replaced with 4 asterisks. |
>sed ‘s/digit:/Book no &/’ IndianBooks.txt
Highlight s Highlight the output |
Let us see the digit character class in Sed command.
Here, the digit represents number 0 to 9 as the search pattern. This command adds the text ‘Book No’ at the beginning of each line. |
Cat IndianBooks.txt
Highlight year > sed ‘s/digit:*$/Published on: &/’ IndianBooks.txt Highlight digit:*$ |
Let us see another example.
In IndianBooks.txt , the last entry is the published year. Let us add the word “Published on” before the year. Type the command as shown. This command finds the last occurrence of the digit and replaces with ‘Published on:’ |
With this we come to the end of this tutorial. Let us summarize. | |
Slide 8: Summary |
In this tutorial, we learnt:
in Sed command. |
Slide:9
Assignment |
As an assignment, try the below commands and see the output.
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Slide 10:
(About Spoken Tutorial Project) |
The video at the following link, summarizes the Spoken Tutorial project.
Please download and watch it. |
Slide 11:
(About Spoken Tutorial Project) |
The Spoken Tutorial Project Team conducts workshops and gives certificates.
For more details, please write to us. |
Slide
Forum questions: |
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Slide: Acknowledgement | Spoken Tutorial project is funded by the Ministry of Education (MoE), Govt. of India. |
This is Pooja from Spoken tutorials, IIT Bombay signing off.
Thanks for joining. |