Removing parts of a string that contain digit with SED/Perl

Question

I have a data that looks like this:

AB208804_1 446 576 AB208804_1orf 0
AB208804_20 446 576 AB208804_20orf 0

I want to convert them into this:

AB208804 446 576 AB208804orf 0
AB208804 446 576 AB208804orf 0

just by removing _\digit part in column 1 and 4.

Why this line doesn't work:

sed 's/_\d+//g'

What's the correct way to do it (one-liner)?

Answer 1

You need the -r switch and a character class for the sed.

$ echo "AB208804_1 446 576 AB208804_1orf 0" | sed -r 's/_[0-9]+//g'
AB208804 446 576 AB208804orf 0

Or, since you asked; in perl:

$ echo "AB208804_1 446 576 AB208804_1orf 0" | perl -ne 's/_\d+//g; print $_'
AB208804 446 576 AB208804orf 0

Answer 2

Try:

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