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sed

Stream Editor for filtering and transforming text, really handy one-liners for SED

Add a blank line every 5 lines (after lines 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.)

gsed '0~5G' 
sed 'n;n;n;n;G;'             

sed 10q

Print first line of file (emulates "head -1")

sed q

sed -e :a -e '$q;N;11,$D;ba'

Print the last 2 lines of a file (emulates "tail -2")

sed '$!N;$!D'

Print the last line of a file (emulates "tail -1")

sed '$!d'

sh sed -n '/regexp/p'

### Delete all CONSECUTIVE blank lines from file except the first 2: ```sh sed '/^\(/N;/\n\)/N;//D' 

### Delete all leading blank lines at top of file
```sh
 sed '/./,$!d'

Delete the last line of each paragraph

sed -n '/^$/{p;h;};/./{x;/./p;}'

Remove most HTML tags (accommodates multiple-line tags)

sh sed -e :a -e 's/<[^>]*>//g;/</N;//ba'

Add one blank line between all of them with sed

sed -i '0~1 a\\'

Inserts one line every 3 rows.

sed -i '0~3 a\\'

Method 2: Inserts one line every 3 rows.

sed -i 'G;G;G'

Method 3: Inserts one line after every string and at end, make 2 empty lines

sed ':a;G;s/\n/&/1;Ta'

Uppercasing First Letter of Words Using SED

echo -e "wuseman" | sed -r 's/\<./\U&/g'

Colorize a word

echo START|sed ''/START/s//`printf "\033[32mSTART\033[0m"`/''

To print a specific line from a file

sed -n 5p <file>

uncomment the lines where the word DEBUG is found

sed '/^#.*DEBUG.*/ s/^#//' $FILE

convert a line to a space

sed     's/.*/ /'

find which lines in a file are longer than N characters

sed -n "/^.\{73,\}/p" < /path/to/file

Easy way to display yum repo priorities

sed -n -e "/^\[/h; /priority *=/{ G; s/\n/ /; s/ity=/ity = /; p }" /etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo | sort -k3n

Get your Speed Dial urls

sed -n '/url/s#^.*url=\(.*://.*\)#\1#p' ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.[dD]efault/SDBackups/*.speeddial | sort | uniq

Search and replace pipes for tabs in file with backup

sed -i.bak -e s/\|/\\t/g filepath.tsv

Remove/replace newline characters.

sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g'

Append the line # -- coding: utf-8 -- to a file

sed -i -e '1i \# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-' yourfile.py

Append a new line "FOOBAR" in all files matching the glob*

sed -i '$a\FOOBAR' *

Simply clean playlist

sed -e '/MP3$\|mp3$\|wma$\|flac$/!d' <filename_source> > <filename_destination>

delete all leading whitespace from each line in file

sed 's/^[ \t]*//' < <file> > <file>.out; mv <file>.out <file>

Sed file spacing

sed G

Convert an UNIX file to a DOS file.

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

truncate files without output redirection or temporary file creation

sed -i 's/`head -n 500 foo.log`//' foo.log

sed : using colons as separators instead of forward slashes

sed "s:/old/direcory/:/new/directory/:" <file>

delete a particular line by line number in file

sed -i 3d ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Convert windows text file to linux text document

sed 's/.$//' Win-file.txt

Reverse DNS lookups

sed 's/\([0-9]*\)\.\([0-9]*\)\.\([0-9]*\)\.\([0-9]*\).in-addr.arpa domain name pointer\(.*\)\./\4.\3.\2.\1\5/' \ lookups.txt

a find and replace within text-based files

sed -i 's/http:\/\/old\/new\///g' index.html

Remove superfluous from conf file

sed -re '/^#/d ; s/#.*$// ; /^\s*$/d'

to display number of lines in a file without using wc command

sed -n "$=" fileName

Remove all leading and trailing slashes on each line of a text file

sed -e "s,/\+$,," -e "s,^/\+,," file.txt

Extract all urls from the last firefox sessionstore.js file used.

sed -e 's/{"url":/\n&/g' ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/sessionstore.js | cut -d\" -f4

prints line numbers

sed '/./=' infile | sed '/^/N; s/\n/ /'

Bold matching string without skipping others

sed 's/pattern/^[[1m&^[[0m/g'

sed = <file> | sed 'N;s/\n/\t/'

sed '4!d'

Remove trailing whitespaces (or tabs) from a text file

sed -i 's/[ \t]\+$//g' file.txt

Remove CR LF from a text file

sed -i 's/\r\n//' file.txt

turn url and link text into a hyperlink

sed "s/\([a-zA-Z]*\:\/\/[^,]*\),\(.*\)/\<a href=\"\1\"\>\2\<\/a\>/"

Convert all tabs in a file to spaces, assuming the tab width is 2

sed -i 's/\t/  /g' yourfile

convert Unix newlines to DOS newlines

sed 's/$'"/`echo \\\r`/"

sed -n '/jan\|Jan\|JAN\|JAn\|jAn\|jAN\|jaN/p' data.txt > jan-only-data.txt

put all lines in comment where de word DEBUG is found

sed -i 's/^.*DEBUG.*/#&/'  $file

Extract a bash function

sed -n '/^function h\(\)/,/^}/p' script.sh

Remove ( color / special / escape / ANSI ) codes, from text, with sed

sed "s,\x1B\[[0-9;]*[a-zA-Z],,g"

List your largest installed packages (on Debian/Ubuntu)

sed -ne '/^Package: \(.*\)/{s//\1/;h;};/^Installed-Size:  \(.*\)/{s//\1/;G;s/\n/ /;p;}' /var/lib/dpkg/status | sort -rn

Delete an hard disk entry in Virtualbox registry

sed -i '/Centos/d' VirtualBox.xml

count the number of times you match a substring in a larger text file

sed ?s/[sub_str]/[sub_str]\n/g? [text_file] | wc -l

Get rid of multiple spaces/tabs in a text file

sed -i "s/\s*/ /g;s/\s*$//" input_file

list all available disks and disk partitions

sed 's/#.*//' /etc/fstab | column -t

top 10 commands used

sed -e 's/ *$//' ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq -cd | sort -nr | head

Display a block of text with AWK

sed -n /start_pattern/,/stop_pattern/p file.txt

Show a script or config file without comments

sed -e '/^[[:blank:]]*#/d; s/[[:blank:]][[:blank:]]*#.*//'  -e '/^$/d' -e '/^\/\/.*/d' -e '/^\/\*/d;/^ \* /d;/^ \*\//d' /a/file/with/comments

Print file content in reverse order

sed -n '1!G;h;$p' techie.txt

Remove blank lines from a file and save output to new file

sed '/^$/d' file >newfile

delete first X lines of a file

sed '1,55d'

Get rid of multiple spaces/tabs in a text file

sed -i "s/\(\x09\{1,\}\)\|\( \{1,\}\)/ /g;s/\(\x09\{1,\}$\)\|\( \{1,\}$\)//g" brisati.txt

empty set of files

sed -i -n '/%/p' *.php

Remove a line from a file using sed (useful for updating known SSH server keys when they change)

sed '${LINE}d' ~/.ssh/known_host

run vlc as root

sed -i 's/geteuid/getppid/g' /usr/bin/vlc

convert DOS newlines to unix newlines

sed 's/$//'

Backup a file before editing it.

    sedit() { cp "$*"{,.bk}; which $EDITOR > /dev/null && $EDITOR "$*" || vim "$*"; }

optimized sed

sed  '/foo/ s/foo/foobar/g' <filename>

Remove "#' from configuration files.

sed -i -e 's/^#$//g' /path/to/file

Remove comments from files

sed -e '/^#/d' -e 's/#.*$//' in

Remove all HTML tags from a file

sed "s/<[^>]\+>//g" file

Update zone file Serial numbers

sed -i 's/20[0-1][0-9]\{7\}/'`date +%Y%m%d%I`'/g' *.db

Remove a line in a text file. Useful to fix "ssh host key change" warnings

sed -i 8d ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Remove a line from a file using sed (useful for updating known SSH server keys when they change)

sed -i '${LINE}d' ~/.ssh/known_host

See the 10 programs the most used

sed -e "s/| /\n/g" ~/.bash_history | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head

separate (emphasize) digital strings from other text

sed 's/[0-9]\+/ [&] /g'

sed -n '3,6p' /path/to/file

Insert a colon between every two digits

sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g;s/:$//' mac_address_list

Regex to remove HTML-Tags from a file

sed -e :a -e 's/<[^>]*>//g;/</N;//ba' index.html

sed "s/\([a-zA-Z]*\:\/\/[^ ]*\)\(.*\)/\<a href=\"\1\"\>\1\<\/a\>\2/"

Shows cpu load in percent

sed -e 's/ .*//' -e 's/\.//' -e 's/^0*//' /proc/loadavg

Apply substitution only on the line following a marker

sed '/MARKER/{N;s/THIS/THAT/}'

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s/\x1B\[([0-9]{1,3}((;[0-9]{1,3})*)?)?[m|K]//g

Comment out a line in a file

sed -i '19375 s/^/#/' file

Simplification of "sed 'your sed stuff here' file > file2 && mv file2 file"

sed -i 'your sed stuff here' file

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s:\x1B\[[0-9;]*[mK]::g"'

Prepend a text to a file.

sed -i '1s/^/text to prepend\n/' file1

Delete line number 10 from file

sed -i '10d' <somefile>

remove empty lines

sed '/^$/d'

Convert files from DOS line endings to UNIX line endings

sed -i 's/^M//' file

remove leading blank lines

sed '/./,$!d'

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s/\x1B\[([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})?)?[m|K]//g"

Convert Unix newlines to DOS newlines

sed 's/$/<ctrl+v><ctrl+m>/'

reverse order of file

sed '1!G;h;$!d'

Remove the first character of each line in a file

sed "s/^.//g" files

Delete Last Line of a File if it is Blank

sed '${/^$/d}' file

Simple XML tag extract with sed

sed -n 's/.*<foo>\([^<]*\)<\/foo>.*/\1/p'

Perform sed substitution on all but the last line of input

sed -e "$ ! s/$/,/"

remove empty lines in place with backup

sed -e '/^$/d' -i .bak filewithempty.lines

sed '10,20!d'

Efficiently print a line deep in a huge log file

sed '1000000!d;q' < massive-log-file.log

Extract title from HTML files

sed -n 's/.*<title>\(.*\)<\/title>.*/\1/ip;T;q' file.html

grep -v with multiple patterns.

sed '/test/{/error\|critical\|warning/d}' somefile

a find and replace within text-based files, for batch text replacement, not using perl

sed -i -e 's/SEARCH_STRING/REPLACE_STRING/g' `find . -iname 'FILENAME'`

Go to the Nth line of file

sed -n 13p /etc/services

Add thousand separator with sed, in a file or within pipe

sed -e :a -e 's/\(.*[0-9]\)\([0-9]\{3\}\)/\1,\2/;ta' filename

append empty line after every line in file.txt

sed G file.txt

Efficiently extract lines between markers

sed -n '/START/,${/STOP/q;p}'

Change the homepage of Firefox

sed -i 's|\("browser.startup.homepage",\) "\(.*\)"|\1 "http://sliceoflinux.com"|' .mozilla/firefox/*.default/prefs.js

sed edit-in-place using -a option instead of -i option (no tmp file created)

    sedi(){ case $# in [01]|[3-9])echo usage: sedi sed-cmds file ;;2)sed -a ''"$1"';H;$!d;g;' $2 |sed -a '/^$/d;w '"$2"''  ;;esac;}

Remove a range of lines from a file

sed -i <file> -re '<start>,<end>d'

Gives you what's between first string and second string included.

sed "s/^ABC/+ABC/" <file | sed "s/DEF$/DEF+/" | tr "\n" "~" | tr "+" "\n" | grep "^ABC"  | tr "~" "\n"

Remove blank lines

sed '/^$/d'

Deleting / Ignoring lines from the top of a file

sed 1d foo.txt

Extract ip addresses with sed

sed -n  's/\([0-9]\{1,3\}\.\)\{3\}[0-9]\{1,3\}/\nip&\n/gp' ips.txt  | grep ip | sed 's/ip//'| sort | uniq

remove lines which are longer than 255

sed -n '/^.\{255\}/!p'

grep -v with multiple patterns.

sed -n '/test/{/error\|critical\|warning/d;p}' somefile

Remove leading zeros in multiple columns with sed

sed 's/\b\(0*\)//g' filename

output the contents of a file removing any empty lines including lines which contain only spaces or tabs.

sed -e '/^[<space><tab>]*$/d' somefile

extract all urls from firefox sessionstore

sed -e "s/\[{/\n/g" -e "s/}, {/\n/g"  sessionstore.js | grep url | awk -F"," '{ print $1 }'| sed -e "s/url:\"\([^\"]*\)\"/\1/g" -e "/^about:blank/d" > session_urls.txt

sed -n '1,/regex/p' filename

preprocess code to be posted in comments on this site

sed 's/^/$ /' "$script" | xclip

quick and dirty formatting for HTML code

sed -r 's_(/[^>]*?>)_\1\n_g' filename.html

Do a search-and-replace in a file after making a backup

sed -i.bak 's/old/new/g' file

Concatenates lines using sed

sed -e :a -e '/$/N;s/\n/ /;ta' <filename>

Replace multiple spaces with semicolon

sed "s/\s\+/;/g;s/^ //;s/ $//" filename.csv

Change every instance of OLD to NEW in file FILE

sed -i 's/OLD/NEW/g' FILE

Convert DOS newlines (CR/LF) to Unix format

sed 's/^M$//' input.txt > output.txt

Embed next line on the end of current line using sed

sed  'X{N;s/\n//;}' file.txt (where X is the current line)

remove newlines from specific lines in a file using sed

sed -i '/pattern/N; s/\n//' filename

Capitalize the first letter of every word

sed "s/\b\(.\)/\u\1/g"

Show a config file without comments

sed -e 's/#.*//;/^\s*$/d'

Top 20 commands in your bash history

sed -e 's/[;|][[:space:]]*/\n/g' .bash_history | cut delimiter=' ' fields=1 | sort | uniq count | sort numeric-sort reverse | head lines=20

Update grub menu.lst

sed -e '/^$/d' -e '/^#/d' -e '/initrd/ a\ ' -e 's/hiddenmenu//g' -e '/^timeout/d' -e '/default/ a\timeout\t\t15' -e 's/quiet//g' -e 's/splash/rootdelay=60/g' /boot/grub/menu.lst > /boot/grub/menu.lst.new

delete all leading and trailing whitespace from each line in file

sed 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//' -i file

Remove space and/or tab characters at the end of line

sed -i 's/[ \t]*$//' file

delete all trailing whitespace from each line in file

sed -i 's/^\s\+//' <file>

Display email addresses that have been sent to by a postfix server since the last mail log rollover

sed -n -e '/postfix\/smtp\[.*status=sent/s/^.*to=<\([^>]*\).*$/\1/p' /var/log/mail.log | sort -u

Given process ID print its environment variables

sed 's/\o0/\n/g' /proc/INSERT_PID_HERE/environ

sed 2~2d

Search replace with Ansible style timestamps

sed -i.$(date +%F@%T) 's/^LogLevel warn/LogLevel debug/g' httpd.conf

Exclude inserting a table from a sql import

sed '/INSERT INTO `unwanted_table`/d' mydb.sql > reduced.sql

Getting a domain from url, ex: very nice to get url from squid access.log

sed -e "s/[^/]*\/\/\([^@]*@\)\?\([^:/]*\).*/\2/"

Multi line grep using sed and specifying open/close tags

sed '/'"<opening tag>"'/,/'"<closing tag>"'/{/'"<closing tag>"'/d;p};d' "<file>"

SED - Substitute string in next line

sed -i.backup '/patter/{n;s/foo/bar/g}' file

remove repeated pairs of characters e.g. "xtxtxtxt" will become "xt"

sed -ru 's/(..)\1{2,}/\1/g'

Delete all empty/blank lines from text file & output to file

sed '/^$/d' /tmp/data.txt > /tmp/output.txt

Fix subtitle timing (for .sub files)

sed -e 's/{/|/' -e 's/}{/|/' -e 's/}/|/' myFile.sub | awk -F "|" 'BEGIN {OFS =  "|"} { $2 = $2 - 600; $3 = $3 - 600; print $0 }' | sed -e 's/^|/{/' -e 's/\([0-9]\)|\([0-9]\)/\1}{\2/' -e 's/|/}/' >

MySQL: Slice out a specific table from the output of mysqldump

sed -n "/^ Table structure for table \`departments\`/,/^ Table structure for table/p"

Comment out all lines in a file beginning with string

sed -i 's/^\(somestring\)/#\1/' somefile.cfg

commentate specified line of a file

sed -i '<line_no>s/\(.*\)/#\1/' <testfile>

Remove multiple spaces

sed "s/^ *//;s/ *$//;s/ \{1,\}/ /g" filename.txt

Simple Comment an entire file

sed -i 's/^/#/' FILENAME

Convert a Python interactive session to a python script

sed  's/^\([^>.]\)/#\1/;s/^>>> //;s/^\.\.\./  /'

Add a line from 1 file after every line of another (shuffle files together)

sed '/^/R addfile' targetfile > savefile

sed -n '/regex/,$p' filename

Compute the numeric sum of a file

sed i"+" file.txt | xargs echo 0 |bc

Delete leading whitespace from the start of each line

sed 's/^[ \t]*//' input.txt

Delete leading whitespace from the start of each line

sed 's/^\s*//' input.txt

Search apache virtual host by pattern

sed -n '/^[^#]*<Virtual/{:l N; /<\/Virtual/!bl;}; /PATTERN/p' vhosts.conf

Terminal - Show directories in the PATH, one per line with sed and bash3.X `here string'

sed 's/:/\n/g' <<<$PATH

Remove a range of lines from a file

sed -i <start>,<end>d <filename>

Every Nth line position # (SED)

sed -n '1,${p;n;n;}' foo > foo_every3_position1; sed -n '2,${p;n;n;}' foo > foo_every3_position2; sed -n '3,${p;n;n;}' foo > foo_every3_position3

In-Place search/replace with datestamped backup

sed -i.`date +%Y%m%d` -e 's/pattern/replace' [filename]

Replace spaces in a file with hyphens

sed -i 's/ /-/g' *

Delete the specified line

sed -i 8d ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Change host name

sed -i 's/oldname/newname/' /etc/hosts /etc/hostname

sed -n '4{p;q}'

sed -n '4p'

Cleanup a (source) text file, removing trailing spaces/tabs and multiple consecutive blank lines

sed -i -e 's/[ \t]*$//;/^$/N;/\n$/D' sourcefiletocleanup

Put uppercase letters in curly brackets in a BibTeX database

sed '/^\s*[^@%]/s=\([A-Z][A-Z]*\)\([^}A-Z]\|},$\)={\1}\2=g' literature.bib > output.bib

Prepend a text to a file.

sed -i 's/^/ls -l /' output_files.txt

Edit Ruby files within the current directory to use Ruby 1.9+ style symbol keys instead of rockets

sed -i "s/:\([a-zA-Z_]*\) =>/\1:/g" **/*.rb

uncomment the lines where the word DEBUG is found

sed 's/^#\(.*DEBUG\)/\1/' $FILE

Raspberry Pi serial number w/o leading zeros

sed '$!d s/.*: 0\+//' /proc/cpuinfo

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s/(\x1B|\033)(\(B|\[([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})?)?[A-Z])//Ig"

urldecoding

sed -e's/%\([0-9A-F][0-9A-F]\)/\\\\\x\1/g' | xargs echo -e

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r 's/'$(echo -e "\033")'\[[0-9]{1,2}(;([0-9]{1,2})?)?[mK]//g'

Replace words with sed

sed /BEGIN/,/END/s/xxx/yyy/g input.txt

Rebuild a Delimited File with a Unique Delimiter

sed 's/$/uniqueString/' file.old | sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed ':loop;/^\"[^\"]*$/N;s/\n/,/;/[^\"]$/t loop' | sed ':loop;N;s/\n/@/g;/uniqueString$/!b loop;s/uniqueString$//' > file.new

delete all trailing whitespace from each line in file

sed 's/[ \t]*$//' < <file> > <file>.out; mv <file>.out <file>

delete all leading and trailing whitespace from each line in file

sed 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//' < <file> > <file>.out; mv <file>.out <file>

Remove r (carriage return) in a file

sed -i 's/\r//g somefile.txt

delete all leading and trailing whitespace from each line in file

sed 's/^\s*//;s/\s*$//' -i file

Puts every word from a file into a new line

sed -r 's/[ \t\r\n\v\f]+/\^J/g' INFILE > OUTFILE

Change your e-mail address in multiple files

sed -i 's/oldname@example.com/newname@example.com/g' `grep oldname@example.com -rl .`

Delete all lines after the first match

sed -n -e '1,/match/p'

Extract ip addresses with sed

sed -n 's/.*\(\(\(^\| \)[0-9]\{1,3\}\.\)\{1\}\([0-9]\{1,3\}\.\)\{2\}[0-9]\{1,3\}\) .*/\1/gp'

sed replace string in whole files in folder

sed -i 's/SearchString/ReplaceString/g' views/*.php

bash chop

sed 's/.$//'

Printout a list of field numbers from a CSV file with headers as first line.

sed 's/,/\n/g;q' file.csv | nl

Remove lines that contain a specific pattern(\(1) from file(\)2).

sed -i '/myexpression/d' /path/to/file.txt

Convert Windows/DOS Text Files to Unix

sed -i 's/\r//' <filename>

insert blank lines

sed G input.txt | cat -s

Removes lines [range] from file

sed '1,5d'  /path/to/file

more than 4 repeated characters to a single character

sed -ru 's/(.)\1{4,}/\1/g'

Convert camelCase to underscores (camel_case)

sed -r 's/([a-z]+)([A-Z][a-z]+)/\1_\l\2/g' file.txt

Tells which group you DON'T belong to (opposite of command "groups") - uses sed

sed -e "/$USER/d;s/:.*//g" /etc/group | sed -e :a -e '/$/N;s/\n/ /;ta'

Remove blank lines from a file

sed -i.bak '/^[[:space:]]*$/d' file_name

Convert ISO8601 dates to milliseconds since epoch

sed "s|\(2[0-9]\{3\}-[01][0-9]-[0-3][0-9]T[01][0-9]:[0-5][0-9]:[0-5][0-9].[0-9]\{3\}Z\)|$(date -d \1 +%s)000|g"

Go to the Nth line of file

sed -n '15p' $file

MySQL: Slice out a specific database (assumes existence of the USE statement) from mysqldump output

sed -n "/^USE \`employees\`/,/^USE \`/p"

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s@\^\[{1,2}([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})?(;[0-9])?(m|K){1,2})?@@g"

Only change the first occurrence of the pattern

sed -i "0,/enabled/{s|enabled=0|enabled=1|}" /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo

Remove the first line containing 'match' from file

sed -i "$(grep -nm 1 match file|cut -f1 -d:)d" file

replace deprecated php-function split in php files

sed -i s/split\(/explode\(/ whatever.php

File without comments or blank lines.

sed 's/^[[:blank:]]*//; s/^#.*//; /^$/d' filename

Comment out all lines in a file beginning with string

sed -i '/^somestring/ s/^/#/' somefile.cfg

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s/\x1B\[([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})?)?[m|K]//g"

Replace strings in files

sed -i -e 's/war/peace/g' *

pick up 3 lines start at every 5th line of file.txt

sed -n '1~5{N;N;p}' file.txt

Regular expression search pattern to remove the Datetime and Name when you paste from skype chat into your text editor

sed -i 's/^.*?].*?:\s//g' skype-chat-log.txt

Analyze Apache Web Log Statistics starting on DATE x

sed -n '/05\/Dec\/2010/,$ p' access.log | goaccess -s -b

Duplicate a line in a text file and replace part of the duplicated line

sed -i -e '/foo/p' -e 's/foo/barfoo/' file

Format a password file for John the Ripper from Cisco configs (Level 5)

sed -n 's/[ :]/_/g; s/^\(.\{1,\}\)_5_\($1$[$./0-9A-Za-z]\{27,31\}\)_*$/\1:\2/p' < cisco-device-config > passwd

HTML esacaping with sed

sed 's/&/\&amp;/g; s/</\&lt;/g; s/>/\&gt;/g; s/"/\&quot;/g; s/'"'"'/\&#39;/g'

Parse bookmarks and download youtube files

sed 's+href="\([^"]*\)"+\n\1\n+g' bookmarks.html | grep '^http' |clive

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -E "s/"$'\E'"\[([0-9]{1,3}((;[0-9]{1,3})*)?)?[m|K]//g"

Extract specific lines from a text file using Stream Editor (sed)

sed -n -e 1186,1210p A-small-practice.in

Insert line(s) at top of file using sed

sed -i '1iI am a new line' file.txt

Extract XML from an otherwise plain text log file

sed -n '/<Tag>/,/<\/Tag>/p' logfile.log

List the CPU model name

sed -n 's/^model name[ \t]*: *//p' /proc/cpuinfo

Edit hosts file to remove "foo.novalocal" from it where foo is the hostname of a new VM

sed -e "s/^127.0.1.1 $(hostname).novalocal/127.0.1.1/g" /etc/hosts

convert html links into plain text with link anchor

sed 's!<[Aa] *href*=*"\([^"]*\)"*>\([^<>]*\)</[Aa]>!\1,\2!g' links.html

delete first and last line from file

sed '1d;$d' filename

Remove comments from files

sed -i -e '/^#[^!].*/d' -e 's/\(.*[^!]\)#.*[^}]/\1/' <filename>

Sort a one-per-line list of email address, weeding out duplicates

sed 's/[ \t]*$//' < emails.txt | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' | sort | uniq > emails_sorted.txt

Create fortune's *.dat file from commandlinefu from saved preferite

sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n\n/\n%\n/g' input.txt >output

Replace nelines with spaces

sed -e :a -e '$!N;s/\n/ /;ta'

Revoke an existing user's group memberships and add another user to those same groups,

sed -i.awkbak "s/\([:,]\)oldspiderman/\1newspiderman/" /etc/group

Uncomment line based on string match

sed -e '/4.2.2.2/ s/^;//' -i test.txt

to display all characters except second last character from each line of a file

sed 's/^\(.*\)\(.\)\(.\)$/\1\3/' fileName

Convert CSV files to TSV

sed 's/,/\t/g' report.csv > report.tsv

Change time format in log, UNIX Timestamp to Human readable

sed -r 's/(\[|])//g' | awk ' { $1=strftime("%D %T",$1); print }'

Remove lines ending or trailing slash (/)

sed -i 'g/text/d' <filename>

Remove last x lines from file using sed

sed -n -e :a -i -e '1,5!{P;N;D;};N;ba' /etc/apt/sources.list

Remove a range of lines from a file

sed -i 6,66d <filename>

rsnapshot vim edit replaying space tabs

sed 's/ \+ /\t/g' /usr/local/etc/rsnapshot.conf >/tmp/snap.conf

Join lines split with backslash at the end

sed -e '/\\$/{:0;N;s/\\\n//;t0}'

To print a specific line from a file

sed -n 5p <file>

uncomment the lines where the word DEBUG is found

sed '/^#.*DEBUG.*/ s/^#//' $FILE

sed : using colons as separators instead of forward slashes

sed "s:/old/direcory/:/new/directory/:" <file>

delete a particular line by line number in file

sed -i 3d ~/.ssh/known_hosts

put all lines in comment where de word DEBUG is found

sed -i 's/^.*DEBUG.*/#&/'  $file

Extract a bash function

sed -n '/^function h\(\)/,/^}/p' script.sh

Remove ( color / special / escape / ANSI ) codes, from text, with sed

sed "s,\x1B\[[0-9;]*[a-zA-Z],,g"

top 10 commands used

sed -e 's/ *$//' ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq -cd | sort -nr | head

Display a block of text with AWK

sed -n /start_pattern/,/stop_pattern/p file.txt

Remove comments from files

sed -e '/^#/d' -e 's/#.*$//' in

Remove all HTML tags from a file

sed "s/<[^>]\+>//g" file

Update zone file Serial numbers

sed -i 's/20[0-1][0-9]\{7\}/'`date +%Y%m%d%I`'/g' *.db

Remove a line in a text file. Useful to fix "ssh host key change" warnings

sed -i 8d ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Remove a line from a file using sed (useful for updating known SSH server keys when they change)

sed -i '${LINE}d' ~/.ssh/known_host

See the 10 programs the most used

sed -e "s/| /\n/g" ~/.bash_history | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head

separate (emphasize) digital strings from other text

sed 's/[0-9]\+/ [&] /g'

sed -n '3,6p' /path/to/file

Insert a colon between every two digits

sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g;s/:$//' mac_address_list

Regex to remove HTML-Tags from a file

sed -e :a -e 's/<[^>]*>//g;/</N;//ba' index.html

sed "s/\([a-zA-Z]*\:\/\/[^ ]*\)\(.*\)/\<a href=\"\1\"\>\1\<\/a\>\2/"

Shows cpu load in percent

sed -e 's/ .*//' -e 's/\.//' -e 's/^0*//' /proc/loadavg

Apply substitution only on the line following a marker

sed '/MARKER/{N;s/THIS/THAT/}'

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s/\x1B\[([0-9]{1,3}((;[0-9]{1,3})*)?)?[m|K]//g

Comment out a line in a file

sed -i '19375 s/^/#/' file

Simplification of "sed 'your sed stuff here' file > file2 && mv file2 file"

sed -i 'your sed stuff here' file

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s:\x1B\[[0-9;]*[mK]::g"'

Prepend a text to a file.

sed -i '1s/^/text to prepend\n/' file1

Delete line number 10 from file

sed -i '10d' <somefile>

remove empty lines

sed '/^$/d'

Convert files from DOS line endings to UNIX line endings

sed -i 's/^M//' file

remove leading blank lines

sed '/./,$!d'

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s/\x1B\[([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})?)?[m|K]//g"

Convert Unix newlines to DOS newlines

sed 's/$/<ctrl+v><ctrl+m>/'

reverse order of file

sed '1!G;h;$!d'

Remove the first character of each line in a file

sed "s/^.//g" files

Delete Last Line of a File if it is Blank

sed '${/^$/d}' file

Simple XML tag extract with sed

sed -n 's/.*<foo>\([^<]*\)<\/foo>.*/\1/p'

Perform sed substitution on all but the last line of input

sed -e "$ ! s/$/,/"

remove empty lines in place with backup

sed -e '/^$/d' -i .bak filewithempty.lines

sed '10,20!d'

Efficiently print a line deep in a huge log file

sed '1000000!d;q' < massive-log-file.log

Extract title from HTML files

sed -n 's/.*<title>\(.*\)<\/title>.*/\1/ip;T;q' file.html

grep -v with multiple patterns.

sed '/test/{/error\|critical\|warning/d}' somefile

a find and replace within text-based files, for batch text replacement, not using perl

sed -i -e 's/SEARCH_STRING/REPLACE_STRING/g' `find . -iname 'FILENAME'`

Go to the Nth line of file

sed -n 13p /etc/services

Add thousand separator with sed, in a file or within pipe

sed -e :a -e 's/\(.*[0-9]\)\([0-9]\{3\}\)/\1,\2/;ta' filename

append empty line after every line in file.txt

sed G file.txt

Efficiently extract lines between markers

sed -n '/START/,${/STOP/q;p}'

Change the homepage of Firefox

sed -i 's|\("browser.startup.homepage",\) "\(.*\)"|\1 "http://sliceoflinux.com"|' .mozilla/firefox/*.default/prefs.js

sed edit-in-place using -a option instead of -i option (no tmp file created)

    sedi(){ case $# in [01]|[3-9])echo usage: sedi sed-cmds file ;;2)sed -a ''"$1"';H;$!d;g;' $2 |sed -a '/^$/d;w '"$2"''  ;;esac;}

Remove a range of lines from a file

sed -i <file> -re '<start>,<end>d'

Gives you what's between first string and second string included.

sed "s/^ABC/+ABC/" <file | sed "s/DEF$/DEF+/" | tr "\n" "~" | tr "+" "\n" | grep "^ABC"  | tr "~" "\n"

Remove blank lines

sed '/^$/d'

Deleting / Ignoring lines from the top of a file

sed 1d foo.txt

Extract ip addresses with sed

sed -n  's/\([0-9]\{1,3\}\.\)\{3\}[0-9]\{1,3\}/\nip&\n/gp' ips.txt  | grep ip | sed 's/ip//'| sort | uniq

remove lines which are longer than 255

sed -n '/^.\{255\}/!p'

grep -v with multiple patterns.

sed -n '/test/{/error\|critical\|warning/d;p}' somefile

Remove leading zeros in multiple columns with sed

sed 's/\b\(0*\)//g' filename

output the contents of a file removing any empty lines including lines which contain only spaces or tabs.

sed -e '/^[<space><tab>]*$/d' somefile

extract all urls from firefox sessionstore

sed -e "s/\[{/\n/g" -e "s/}, {/\n/g"  sessionstore.js | grep url | awk -F"," '{ print $1 }'| sed -e "s/url:\"\([^\"]*\)\"/\1/g" -e "/^about:blank/d" > session_urls.txt

sed -n '1,/regex/p' filename

preprocess code to be posted in comments on this site

sed 's/^/$ /' "$script" | xclip

quick and dirty formatting for HTML code

sed -r 's_(/[^>]*?>)_\1\n_g' filename.html

Do a search-and-replace in a file after making a backup

sed -i.bak 's/old/new/g' file

Concatenates lines using sed

sed -e :a -e '/$/N;s/\n/ /;ta' <filename>

Replace multiple spaces with semicolon

sed "s/\s\+/;/g;s/^ //;s/ $//" filename.csv

Change every instance of OLD to NEW in file FILE

sed -i 's/OLD/NEW/g' FILE

Convert DOS newlines (CR/LF) to Unix format

sed 's/^M$//' input.txt > output.txt

Embed next line on the end of current line using sed

sed  'X{N;s/\n//;}' file.txt (where X is the current line)

remove newlines from specific lines in a file using sed

sed -i '/pattern/N; s/\n//' filename

Capitalize the first letter of every word

sed "s/\b\(.\)/\u\1/g"

Show a config file without comments

sed -e 's/#.*//;/^\s*$/d'

Top 20 commands in your bash history

sed -e 's/[;|][[:space:]]*/\n/g' .bash_history | cut delimiter=' ' fields=1 | sort | uniq count | sort numeric-sort reverse | head lines=20

Update grub menu.lst

sed -e '/^$/d' -e '/^#/d' -e '/initrd/ a\ ' -e 's/hiddenmenu//g' -e '/^timeout/d' -e '/default/ a\timeout\t\t15' -e 's/quiet//g' -e 's/splash/rootdelay=60/g' /boot/grub/menu.lst > /boot/grub/menu.lst.new

delete all leading and trailing whitespace from each line in file

sed 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//' -i file

Remove space and/or tab characters at the end of line

sed -i 's/[ \t]*$//' file

delete all trailing whitespace from each line in file

sed -i 's/^\s\+//' <file>

Display email addresses that have been sent to by a postfix server since the last mail log rollover

sed -n -e '/postfix\/smtp\[.*status=sent/s/^.*to=<\([^>]*\).*$/\1/p' /var/log/mail.log | sort -u

Given process ID print its environment variables

sed 's/\o0/\n/g' /proc/INSERT_PID_HERE/environ

sed 2~2d

Search replace with Ansible style timestamps

sed -i.$(date +%F@%T) 's/^LogLevel warn/LogLevel debug/g' httpd.conf

Exclude inserting a table from a sql import

sed '/INSERT INTO `unwanted_table`/d' mydb.sql > reduced.sql

Getting a domain from url, ex: very nice to get url from squid access.log

sed -e "s/[^/]*\/\/\([^@]*@\)\?\([^:/]*\).*/\2/"

Multi line grep using sed and specifying open/close tags

sed '/'"<opening tag>"'/,/'"<closing tag>"'/{/'"<closing tag>"'/d;p};d' "<file>"

SED - Substitute string in next line

sed -i.backup '/patter/{n;s/foo/bar/g}' file

remove repeated pairs of characters e.g. "xtxtxtxt" will become "xt"

sed -ru 's/(..)\1{2,}/\1/g'

Delete all empty/blank lines from text file & output to file

sed '/^$/d' /tmp/data.txt > /tmp/output.txt

Fix subtitle timing (for .sub files)

sed -e 's/{/|/' -e 's/}{/|/' -e 's/}/|/' myFile.sub | awk -F "|" 'BEGIN {OFS =  "|"} { $2 = $2 - 600; $3 = $3 - 600; print $0 }' | sed -e 's/^|/{/' -e 's/\([0-9]\)|\([0-9]\)/\1}{\2/' -e 's/|/}/' >

MySQL: Slice out a specific table from the output of mysqldump

sed -n "/^ Table structure for table \`departments\`/,/^ Table structure for table/p"

Comment out all lines in a file beginning with string

sed -i 's/^\(somestring\)/#\1/' somefile.cfg

commentate specified line of a file

sed -i '<line_no>s/\(.*\)/#\1/' <testfile>

Remove multiple spaces

sed "s/^ *//;s/ *$//;s/ \{1,\}/ /g" filename.txt

Simple Comment an entire file

sed -i 's/^/#/' FILENAME

Convert a Python interactive session to a python script

sed  's/^\([^>.]\)/#\1/;s/^>>> //;s/^\.\.\./  /'

Add a line from 1 file after every line of another (shuffle files together)

sed '/^/R addfile' targetfile > savefile

sed -n '/regex/,$p' filename

Compute the numeric sum of a file

sed i"+" file.txt | xargs echo 0 |bc

Delete leading whitespace from the start of each line

sed 's/^[ \t]*//' input.txt

Delete leading whitespace from the start of each line

sed 's/^\s*//' input.txt

Search apache virtual host by pattern

sed -n '/^[^#]*<Virtual/{:l N; /<\/Virtual/!bl;}; /PATTERN/p' vhosts.conf

Terminal - Show directories in the PATH, one per line with sed and bash3.X `here string'

sed 's/:/\n/g' <<<$PATH

Remove a range of lines from a file

sed -i <start>,<end>d <filename>

Every Nth line position # (SED)

sed -n '1,${p;n;n;}' foo > foo_every3_position1; sed -n '2,${p;n;n;}' foo > foo_every3_position2; sed -n '3,${p;n;n;}' foo > foo_every3_position3

In-Place search/replace with datestamped backup

sed -i.`date +%Y%m%d` -e 's/pattern/replace' [filename]

Replace spaces in a file with hyphens

sed -i 's/ /-/g' *

Delete the specified line

sed -i 8d ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Change host name

sed -i 's/oldname/newname/' /etc/hosts /etc/hostname

sed -n '4{p;q}'

sed -n '4p'

Cleanup a (source) text file, removing trailing spaces/tabs and multiple consecutive blank lines

sed -i -e 's/[ \t]*$//;/^$/N;/\n$/D' sourcefiletocleanup

Put uppercase letters in curly brackets in a BibTeX database

sed '/^\s*[^@%]/s=\([A-Z][A-Z]*\)\([^}A-Z]\|},$\)={\1}\2=g' literature.bib > output.bib

Prepend a text to a file.

sed -i 's/^/ls -l /' output_files.txt

Edit Ruby files within the current directory to use Ruby 1.9+ style symbol keys instead of rockets

sed -i "s/:\([a-zA-Z_]*\) =>/\1:/g" **/*.rb

uncomment the lines where the word DEBUG is found

sed 's/^#\(.*DEBUG\)/\1/' $FILE

Raspberry Pi serial number w/o leading zeros

sed '$!d s/.*: 0\+//' /proc/cpuinfo

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s/(\x1B|\033)(\(B|\[([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})?)?[A-Z])//Ig"

urldecoding

sed -e's/%\([0-9A-F][0-9A-F]\)/\\\\\x\1/g' | xargs echo -e

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r 's/'$(echo -e "\033")'\[[0-9]{1,2}(;([0-9]{1,2})?)?[mK]//g'

Replace words with sed

sed /BEGIN/,/END/s/xxx/yyy/g input.txt

Rebuild a Delimited File with a Unique Delimiter

sed 's/$/uniqueString/' file.old | sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed ':loop;/^\"[^\"]*$/N;s/\n/,/;/[^\"]$/t loop' | sed ':loop;N;s/\n/@/g;/uniqueString$/!b loop;s/uniqueString$//' > file.new

delete all trailing whitespace from each line in file

sed 's/[ \t]*$//' < <file> > <file>.out; mv <file>.out <file>

delete all leading and trailing whitespace from each line in file

sed 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//' < <file> > <file>.out; mv <file>.out <file>

Remove r (carriage return) in a file

sed -i 's/\r//g somefile.txt

delete all leading and trailing whitespace from each line in file

sed 's/^\s*//;s/\s*$//' -i file

Puts every word from a file into a new line

sed -r 's/[ \t\r\n\v\f]+/\^J/g' INFILE > OUTFILE

Change your e-mail address in multiple files

sed -i 's/oldname@example.com/newname@example.com/g' `grep oldname@example.com -rl .`

Delete all lines after the first match

sed -n -e '1,/match/p'

Extract ip addresses with sed

sed -n 's/.*\(\(\(^\| \)[0-9]\{1,3\}\.\)\{1\}\([0-9]\{1,3\}\.\)\{2\}[0-9]\{1,3\}\) .*/\1/gp'

sed replace string in whole files in folder

sed -i 's/SearchString/ReplaceString/g' views/*.php

bash chop

sed 's/.$//'

Printout a list of field numbers from a CSV file with headers as first line.

sed 's/,/\n/g;q' file.csv | nl

Remove lines that contain a specific pattern(\(1) from file(\)2).

sed -i '/myexpression/d' /path/to/file.txt

Convert Windows/DOS Text Files to Unix

sed -i 's/\r//' <filename>

insert blank lines

sed G input.txt | cat -s

Removes lines [range] from file

sed '1,5d'  /path/to/file

more than 4 repeated characters to a single character

sed -ru 's/(.)\1{4,}/\1/g'

Convert camelCase to underscores (camel_case)

sed -r 's/([a-z]+)([A-Z][a-z]+)/\1_\l\2/g' file.txt

Tells which group you DON'T belong to (opposite of command "groups") - uses sed

sed -e "/$USER/d;s/:.*//g" /etc/group | sed -e :a -e '/$/N;s/\n/ /;ta'

Remove blank lines from a file

sed -i.bak '/^[[:space:]]*$/d' file_name

Convert ISO8601 dates to milliseconds since epoch

sed "s|\(2[0-9]\{3\}-[01][0-9]-[0-3][0-9]T[01][0-9]:[0-5][0-9]:[0-5][0-9].[0-9]\{3\}Z\)|$(date -d \1 +%s)000|g"

Go to the Nth line of file

sed -n '15p' $file

MySQL: Slice out a specific database (assumes existence of the USE statement) from mysqldump output

sed -n "/^USE \`employees\`/,/^USE \`/p"

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s@\^\[{1,2}([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})?(;[0-9])?(m|K){1,2})?@@g"

Only change the first occurrence of the pattern

sed -i "0,/enabled/{s|enabled=0|enabled=1|}" /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo

Remove the first line containing 'match' from file

sed -i "$(grep -nm 1 match file|cut -f1 -d:)d" file

replace deprecated php-function split in php files

sed -i s/split\(/explode\(/ whatever.php

File without comments or blank lines.

sed 's/^[[:blank:]]*//; s/^#.*//; /^$/d' filename

Comment out all lines in a file beginning with string

sed -i '/^somestring/ s/^/#/' somefile.cfg

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -r "s/\x1B\[([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})?)?[m|K]//g"

Replace strings in files

sed -i -e 's/war/peace/g' *

pick up 3 lines start at every 5th line of file.txt

sed -n '1~5{N;N;p}' file.txt

Regular expression search pattern to remove the Datetime and Name when you paste from skype chat into your text editor

sed -i 's/^.*?].*?:\s//g' skype-chat-log.txt

Analyze Apache Web Log Statistics starting on DATE x

sed -n '/05\/Dec\/2010/,$ p' access.log | goaccess -s -b

Duplicate a line in a text file and replace part of the duplicated line

sed -i -e '/foo/p' -e 's/foo/barfoo/' file

Format a password file for John the Ripper from Cisco configs (Level 5)

sed -n 's/[ :]/_/g; s/^\(.\{1,\}\)_5_\($1$[$./0-9A-Za-z]\{27,31\}\)_*$/\1:\2/p' < cisco-device-config > passwd

HTML esacaping with sed

sed 's/&/\&amp;/g; s/</\&lt;/g; s/>/\&gt;/g; s/"/\&quot;/g; s/'"'"'/\&#39;/g'

Parse bookmarks and download youtube files

sed 's+href="\([^"]*\)"+\n\1\n+g' bookmarks.html | grep '^http' |clive

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

sed -E "s/"$'\E'"\[([0-9]{1,3}((;[0-9]{1,3})*)?)?[m|K]//g"

Extract specific lines from a text file using Stream Editor (sed)

sed -n -e 1186,1210p A-small-practice.in

Insert line(s) at top of file using sed

sed -i '1iI am a new line' file.txt

Extract XML from an otherwise plain text log file

sed -n '/<Tag>/,/<\/Tag>/p' logfile.log

List the CPU model name

sed -n 's/^model name[ \t]*: *//p' /proc/cpuinfo

Edit hosts file to remove "foo.novalocal" from it where foo is the hostname of a new VM

sed -e "s/^127.0.1.1 $(hostname).novalocal/127.0.1.1/g" /etc/hosts

convert html links into plain text with link anchor

sed 's!<[Aa] *href*=*"\([^"]*\)"*>\([^<>]*\)</[Aa]>!\1,\2!g' links.html

delete first and last line from file

sed '1d;$d' filename

Remove comments from files

sed -i -e '/^#[^!].*/d' -e 's/\(.*[^!]\)#.*[^}]/\1/' <filename>

Sort a one-per-line list of email address, weeding out duplicates

sed 's/[ \t]*$//' < emails.txt | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' | sort | uniq > emails_sorted.txt

Join lines split with backslash at the end

sed -e '/\\$/{:0;N;s/\\\n//;t0}'

Cut everything until last slash

sed 's:..*/::'                   
echo "${var##*/}"

# Colorize sed outpu
printf 'my ERROR color' | sed s/ERROR/`printf "\033[32mERROR\033[0m"`/

Remove all space before a line

sed 'NUMq;d' 

sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//'

Remove all leading and trailing whitespace from end of each line

sed 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'

Print everything after /

sed 's:.*/::'

sed -n -e 's/^.*stalled: //p'

Cut all spaces infront of all words

sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//'

Make space very 3 word

echo "Youcaneasilydothisbyhighlightingyourcode." | sed 's/\(.\{3\}\)/\1 /g'

Cut after every third line

printf 'Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3\nLine 4\nLine 5\n' | sed '$!N;$!N;s/\n/ /g'

head -4 /etc/passwd | tr : , | sed -e 's/^/| /' -e 's/,/,| /g' -e 's/$/,|/' | column -t -s,

Resources

https://fabianlee.org/2018/10/28/linux-using-sed-to-insert-lines-before-or-after-a-match/

Last update: June 30, 2022
Created: June 18, 2022