The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20181121140441/http://www.pement.org:80/sed/

Home > sed

sed . . . the stream editor

Originally written and designed for Unix, sed has been ported to MS-DOS, Windows, OS/2, and other operating systems. Sed is a non-interactive editor that works from a command line; it's not a GUI Windows app. Sed changes blocks of text on the fly, without making you open up a screen, push a cursor around, and press DELETE or INSERT or ENTER or function keys.

"Hey," you might ask. "All word processors have a find-and-replace feature."

Not like this. Sed is extremely powerful, and you can do things in sed that you can't do in any standard word processor. And because sed is external to the word processor and comes with every Unix system in the world, once you learn sed you'll have a very handy tool in your toolkit, even if (like me) you rarely use Unix.

How it works: You feed sed a script of editing commands (like, "change every line that begins with a colon to such-and-such") and sed sends your revised text to the screen. To save the revisions on disk, use the redirection arrow, >newfile.txt. Sample syntax:

         sed "one-or-two-sed-commands" input.file >newfile.txt
         sed -f bigger_sed.script input.file >newfile.txt

This page is an attempt to collect my FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) files and my favorite sed utilities and introductions for novices. The text files are for any sed user; the binaries are for DOS/Windows users.

New!

sedsed — a sed debugger written in Python
sd.ksh — a sed debugger written in ksh

Obviously, you have to have access to Python and/or a genuine ksh (Korn shell) to run these debuggers. If I ever get a round tuit, I will write a mini-tutorial on using each of these. <smile>

sed docs by Eric Pement

the sed FAQ (version 015, HTML format)
the sed FAQ (ver. 015, plaintext, 168 K)
over 100 handy one-liners for sed, including many simple, useful scripts not in the sed FAQ (version 5.2)
using sed to make indexes for books
writing if/elseif/else scripts with sed
Getting Data into Environment Variables under MS-DOS
Sorting Text with Diacritical Characters (or, How to write your own collating sequences)
Handling UTF-16 Unicode on DOS sed

various sed websites

sed.sourceforge.net, a site with many scripts, tutorials, and links. (Thanks, Aurelio!)
the seder's grabbag (Thanks, Paolo!)
Roger Chang's sed and shell scripts . . . another new URL
Sven Guckes
Felix von Leitner
Yiorgos Adamopoulos
u-sedit3.zip - docs for total beginners, using sedmod and normal sed (filesize: 63 K)
The Open Group man page for sed (Version 2)
The Open Group man page on regular expressions (sed supports "basic" regexes with two additions)

popular sed binaries for MS-DOS

All of these versions will run in a DOS window or in a full-screen DOS session under Microsoft Windows.

sed-3.59.zip - super-sed v3.59, executable compiled for Win32 systems. If you run under Windows, this is all you need. I have also written a brief summary of ssed features, but the documentation, GNU GPL license, and full source code are in the next file. (filesize: 40 K)
sed-3.60.tar.gz - full source code, documentation, test suite, and all files needed to create ssed (super-sed) version 3.48. No precompiled binaries included. (filesize: 780 K)
ssed360s.zip - same file as above, only archived in ZIP format instead of tar.gz format. As you can see, the ZIP format doesn't compress as well as tar.gz. (filesize: 1010 K)

gsed407x.zip - GNU sed v4.0.7, UnxUtils precompiled 32-bit binaries for DOS or CMD running under Windows. This version supports \t, \n, \xHH and other escape sequences in s/// commands; accepts strings immediately after a,i,c commands, supports 0,/regex/ address ranges, and handles Windows longfilenames. ssed and GNU sed share a common code base, but this is the real GNU sed. Note: this version, unlike one that had the same name and version number from UnxUtils, has fixed the -i bug in sed, which formerly prevented the proper creation (filesize: 50 K)
sed-4.0.7.tar.gz - source code for latest GNU sed
sed407b.zip - GNU sed v4.0.7, DJGPP precompiled 32-bit binaries, for MS-DOS. Probably does not require Windows. This version still has the -i{filename} bug that prevented creation of long filenames under Win9x,NT,2K, etc. (filesize: 148 K)
sed407s.zip - - source code for the above file. (filesize: 859 K)

GNU sed 3.02.80, sed 3.02, sed 2.05, sed 1.18 - These are older versions of GNU sed are considered buggy and have superseded by v4.0.7. Source code is still available at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/sed/

csed-030913.zip - Precompiled Win32 binaries of csed (dated 2003-Sept-13) by Laurent Vogel. This version corrects many (all?) of the bugs in sed15, below, and keeps nearly all the extended escape sequences of HHsed v1.5, with the main exception being that in csed \+ means "one or more" and a lone + means plus-sign, whereas HHsed used + for "one or more" and an escaped \+ for the plus sign. (filesize: 51 K)
csed-030913.tgz - source code for the above file. You may need to rename this to csed-030913.tar.gz to unpack it, depending on your operating system and available utilities. (filesize: 69 K)
sed15x.zip - HHsed version 1.5; popular MS-DOS version with precompiled .EXE and manual (supports only standard 8.3 filenames; filesize: 21 K)
sed15exe.zip - HHsed 1.5, precompiled for Win32, supports long filenames. Get the docs above or below (filesize: 15 K)
sed15.zip - Turbo C source code for HHsed, history and docs, no executables (filesize: 61 K)

sedmod10.zip - a small, flexible version of sed. Doesn't support Win95 long filenames, doesn't support range arguments like \{30\} or \{1,5\} (filesize: 40 K)
sedmfix1.txt - bugfix for sedmod v1.0, involving the -i switch and the 'd' command

Berkeley sed - a small MS-DOS version of sed distributed at no charge with the Berkeley utilities, a set of 40 Unix utilities ported to DOS. Get all 40 utilities plus a .PDF reference manual in a single .ZIP file (filesize: 1.2 MB), or just download the sed executable and basic docs from me in ZIP format (32 K) or just get the EXE alone (34 K) from the parent website. I am abbreviating this version "bsed" for the table below.

This version of sed supports . . . .	ssed	gsed302.80	gsed302	gsed205	gsed103	sed15	sedmod	bsed
A Table of Differences among DOS versions of SED
Win9x long filenames	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y¹	N	?²
newlines in s/find/rep/ replacement text via \n	Y	Y	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
represent tabs by \t	Y	Y	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y³
"a append-on-same-line" (for a,i,c commands)	Y	Y	N	N	N	Y	Y	N
interval expressions like *\{m,n\}*	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	Y⁴	N	Y
ignore case /flag/i or switch (-i)	Y	Y	Y	N	N	N	Y	N
hex code entry via \xHH	Y	Y	N	N	Y	Y	N	N
unlimited line length or buffer size	Y	Y	Y	Y	64K	4K	4K
numeric argument flags in s/ubsti/tution/5	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N
OR searches with \\|, like */this\\|or\\|this/*	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	N	N
periodic line matching with M~N	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	N	N	N
word arguments with $1, $2, ... $8, $9	N	N	N	N	N	N	Y
case change with \L, \l, \U, \u, \E, \e	Y	N	N	N	N	N	Y	N
can run in MS-DOS mode, fully outside of Windows	N	Y	Y	N	N	Y⁹	Y

¹ File SED15X.ZIP does not support Win95 long filenames. However, a version of SED15.EXE compiled with Mingw32 does support long filenames and is available here.
²Berkeley sed docs say that it supports Windows Long Filenames, but it doesn't work under Windows 2000. Not yet tested under Win9x.
³Yes, but only substitutes TAB for \t on the "find" portion, not on the "replace" portion of a s/ubsti/tution/. Undocumented.
⁴ Interval range of \{0,n\} not supported in sed15.
⁹ sed15 will run in MS-DOS mode; the version compiled with Mingw32 will not.

mailing list for sed users

If you are interested in learning more about sed (its syntax, using regular expressions, etc.) you are welcome to subscribe to a sed-oriented mailing list. In fact, there are two mailing lists about sed: one in English named sed-users, moderated by Sven Guckes; and one in Portuguese named sed-BR, moderated by Aurelio Marinho Jargas. The average volume of mail for sed-users is about 10 messages a week.

sed-BR mailing list home page
sed-users mailing list home page
To subscribe to sed-users, send a blank message to: sed-users-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe to sed-users, send a blank message to: sed-users-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

related batch editing files

Console/command-line apps

MiniTrue, v2.02 - by Andrew Pipkin. MiniTrue ("mtr") is a truly powerful text view and replacement tool. Search/Replace syntax uses Perl-style regular expressions, with a non-sed style syntax ("find_regex" = "replace"). Editing commands can be entered from the DOS command line or from a script file. MT supports direct alteration of input files (unlike sed), directory recursion (ditto), prompted replacement (ditto!), video highlighting (ditto!!), multi-line searching (ditto!!!), and handling of compressed archive files like .ZIP, .ARJ, .LHA, and others (yowza!). Handles files and lines of unlimited size or length. Best of all, MT is distributed as freeware, with the source code available.

MiniTrue ran fine on my Windows 98 system, but under Windows 2000 there are problems with the console display, the pager, and long filename expansion. I wrote this document to briefly summarize how to use it, and to suggest some workarounds under Win2K. My document is not finished, but I'm posting it anyway as a work in progress. It's better than having nothing at all.

snr506.zip - Search'N'Replace v5.06, by Tom Lundin. Doesn't use Unix "regular expressions", but possibly THE most powerful tool ever written for doing massive search-and-replace operations on any file, including binary code and .EXE files. Find/replace commands may be up to 4,999 chars in length, and up to 2,500 find/replace commands may be entered in a single table, with all commands processed simultaneously. Supports variable-length search patterns, various wildcards, and multiple toggle-type (on/off) flags. $50 shareware, but worth every penny if you need full control over binary or nontext files. (filesize: 100k)

snr61sw.zip - Search'N'Replace v6.1 (shareware zip file). This is a more recent version of SNR than the other. Includes 32-bit versions for DOS and a GUI version for Win95/98/NT (with long filename support). Requires 486 or higher to run. Shareware price is raised to $60. (filesize: 417k)

Windows apps
This section has been revised, to remove programs that don't work that well and to recommend better things in their place. If you find things that work better for you, drop me a line to show me your discoveries.

BK ReplaceEm - ver. 2.0, by Boolean Dream. This software is free for both personal and commercial use, with no advertising stuck in. Supports strings, regular expressions, directory recursion, named "groups" of files to alter (you may regularly change the same set of files), line ranges (only replace within certain blocks or between certain lines), case-sensitive on/off, and much more. This is one of the best.

Handy File Find and Replace - ver. 1.2, by SilverAge Software. Case sensitive, recurse down directories, select files by dates, attributes, generate log files, robust regular expressions, and more. This software is free for personal or corporate use. No nag screens.

TextWiz - ver. 2.1. Features include multi-line find/replace in any number of files from the same folder; optionally create back-up files; optionally just searches for text in multiple files, returning a list of filenames; view files in TextWiz, in Notepad, or in a default application; case-sensitive matching; upload files via FTP; counts lines/words/chars, more. Free for personal use, but contains ad banners. Commercial use (or removing ad banners) costs $20.

InfoRapid Search & Replace - ver. 3.1e. A Win32 app with built-in converters for searching and previewing HTML/RTF documents. In pure text files, the found passages can be replaced after the search is over. A preview displays hits in highlighting. InfoRapid can also search WinWord, Excel, Lotus, WordPerfect, etc. and preview them in their original layout. InfoRapid Search & Replace is distributed as freeware for private use; commercial use requires a small fee. Replacements can be performed in binary files as well as text.

XReplace-32 - version 2.32, for Win XP/2K/9x, by Vestris, Inc. A 32-bit Windows utility for performing multiple replacements in multiple files in multiple directories. XReplace supports regular expressions, macros, scheduled replacement times, search patterns can cross line boundaries. Shareware from Switzerland, US$39; 15-day free trial version available.

Thanks for visiting. Hope you found what you wanted!

Eric Pement, sed FAQ maintainer
home page: http://www.student.northpark.edu/pemente/

Last modified: 14 Jan 2004, 15:00:04

Oct	NOV	Dec
	21
2017	2018	2019