Sed Tutorial, Examples, Scripts and Tips
Basic Sed Concepts and Commands.
The idea is to have a lot of repetition on the basic ideas on different types
of problems. We believe it doesn’t help much to give one example only on how to
use a given feature. Knowing that the construct s/foo/bar/ is used to search
and replace text is easy to remember, but that doesn’t mean one has the
necessary experience to use it to solve different problems.
For instance, for a really beginner programmer, if he or she knows they can
do 2 + 3 = 5 and that they can do a = 2; b = 3; and then proceed to
a + b = 5 doesn’t mean they’ll realise that they can also do a + 3 and
2 + b or even a + -5, for instance.
I emphasize: lots of examples that keep reusing the same concepts to solve
different problems really help one gain insight on how to use them for even
more problems later much more than just memorizing ``Ah, s is substitute’’.
In the book Mastering Regular Expressions the author says that a lot of stuff in the book are not about regex itself, but are about using regex. That is a really nice idea to cling to.
I wish some IRC channels were more open to related subjects instead of being proud to shout “off-topic” to everything they possibly can.
Other Sed Learning Resources
- GNU Sed Online Info Page.
- Sed FAQ.
- Sed Oneliners.
- sedsed — This will help you debug and better understand Sed in general.
- Sed’s Grab Bag — A lot of cool Sed stuff.
- Colored Sed Scripts — Stuff generated with SedSed.
- Peteris Krumins’ Famous Sed Oneliners Explained — Very nice article. There you’ll find links to his other Sed posts.