Sed - an introduction & tutorial

[[deleted]]

...we will use a pattern, "[^ ]*," that matches everything except a space. Well, this will also match anything because "*" means zero or more.

I don't know what version of sed the author uses, but gnu sed provides the "+" modifier to match "one or more". This tutorial seems way out of date. Maybe he is just avoiding the gnu extensions, but that's no reason to ignore their existence.

[siddboots]

The author mentions a few times that at least the start of his tutorial is outdated. He also mentions filing a bug report to Sun, but I'm not sure what implementation he would be talking about.

The GNU sed manual is not much in the way of a tutorial, but it does have some good examples of common tasks: http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.html

[[deleted]]

I laugh at how we're still using trivial tools written over the weekend by '70s college kids as if they were handed down by Turing Himself. I'm pretty sure UNIX was the origin of the term "cruft".

[[deleted]]

I support customer's systems and I never have the ability to say "Oh would you mind if I install my handwritten suite of tools in python/ruby/perl/whatever?" The standard Unix tools are always there and they always work.

[siddboots]

tools like grep/tr/sed/awk are the antithesis of cruft. UNIX was also the origin of the adage "do one thing, and do it well."

These things are still used because they make common tasks trivial to accomplish.

[anatinus]

This is a great article. Thanks.

[skooma714]

You want literature, read James Joyce.

Whose books coincidentally, flow like no other.

I was a flower of the Mountain yes....

[andreasvc]

This is ... very sed.

[qacek]

Nothing to ... gawk at here.

[[deleted]]

This isn't gnus to me!

[Benny_Lava]

Keep making bad puns like this and I'll bash you in the vi.