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How to search and replace text in a file with sed. Not using cat.


The sed command is very useful for searching and replacing text in a file. This is how to search for and replace a text string in a file.

Homer@bejiitas ~
$ sed -i 's/<main>/<mein>/gi;' my.c

This is how to search and replace text in a file and leave a backup copy with a tilde character appended to the file-name.

sed --in-place=~ 's/Australia/Austraya/gi;' au-WaggaWagga

This is the way to filter a text file with sed and output to STDOUT. Not using GNU cat. Just have the filename as the second argument to the cat command.

homer@deusexmachina ~/Documents $ sed 's/pacman/apt/gi;' blog.txt

And you may also pipe the output of a command into sed. This is useful for building a long command for the perfect shell function.

homer@deusexmachina ~/Documents $ echo "Hello World" | sed 's/World/Homer/gi;'
Hello Homer

You can also add line numbers to a text file. Here I am adding line numbers to a file that contains a list of IP addresses. I also added double hyphens to separate the line numbers from the IP addresses.

homer@deusexmachina ~/Documents $ awk -F, '{if($2=="") print NR " --", $0}' iplist.txt
1 -- 209.185.108
2 -- 209.185.253
3 -- 209.85.238
4 -- 209.85.238.11
5 -- 209.85.238.4
6 -- 216.239.33.96
7 -- 216.239.33.97
8 -- 216.239.33.98
9 -- 216.239.33.99
10 -- 216.239.37.98
11 -- 216.239.37.99
12 -- 216.239.39.98
13 -- 216.239.39.99
14 -- 216.239.41.96
15 -- 216.239.41.97
16 -- 216.239.41.98
17 -- 216.239.41.99
18 -- 216.239.45.4
19 -- 216.239.46
20 -- 216.239.51.96
21 -- 216.239.51.97
22 -- 216.239.51.98
23 -- 216.239.51.99
24 -- 216.239.53.98
25 -- 216.239.53.99
26 -- 216.239.57.96
27 -- 216.239.57.97
28 -- 216.239.57.98
29 -- 216.239.57.99
30 -- 216.239.59.98
31 -- 216.239.59.s 99
32 --

I found that solution here: http://www.unix.com/shell-programming-scripting/30729-printing-line-number-using-awk.html.

On another note; there is an interesting answer here: http://stacBut eh koverflow.com/questions/4042601/unixhow-to-convert-ip-address-to-binary-code. this explains how to convert an IP address to binary using the command line.

But the ipcalc command is best for this.

homer@deusexmachina ~ $ ipcalc 192.168.1.1
Address:   192.168.1.1          11000000.10101000.00000001. 00000001
Netmask:   255.255.255.0 = 24   11111111.11111111.11111111. 00000000
Wildcard:  0.0.0.255            00000000.00000000.00000000. 11111111
=>
Network:   192.168.1.0/24       11000000.10101000.00000001. 00000000
HostMin:   192.168.1.1          11000000.10101000.00000001. 00000001
HostMax:   192.168.1.254        11000000.10101000.00000001. 11111110
Broadcast: 192.168.1.255        11000000.10101000.00000001. 11111111
Hosts/Net: 254                   Class C, Private Internet

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