Ubuntu ships with GNU sed
, where the suffix for the -i
option is optional. OS X ships with BSD sed
, where the suffix is mandatory. Try sed -i ''
To complement microtherion's helpful, to-the-point answer:
tl;dr:
The equivalent of this GNU sed
(standard on most Linux distros) command:
sed -i 's/foo/bar/' file
is this BSD/macOS sed
command:
sed -i '' 's/foo/bar/' file # Note the '' as a *separate argument*
With BSD/macOS sed
, the following commands do not work at all or not as intended:
sed -i 's/foo/bar/' file # Breaks; script is misinterpreted as backup-file suffix
sed -i'' 's/foo/bar/' file # Ditto
sed -i -e 's/foo/bar/' file # -e is misinterpreted as backup-file suffix
For a discussion of all the differences between GNU sed
and BSD/macOS sed
, see this answer of mine.
Portable approach:
Note: Portable here means that the command works with both implementations discussed. It is not portable in a POSIX sense, because the -i
option is not POSIX-compliant.
# Works with both GNU and BSD/macOS Sed, due to a *non-empty* option-argument:
# Create a backup file *temporarily* and remove it on success.
sed -i.bak 's/foo/bar/' file && rm file.bak
For an explanation, see below; for alternative solutions, including a POSIX-compliant one, see this related answer of mine.
In GNU sed
(standard on most Linux distros) and BSD/macOS sed
, the -i
option, which performs in-place updating[1]
of its input files, accepts an option-argument that specifies what suffix (filename extension) to use for the backup file of the file being updated.
E.g., in both implementations, the following keeps the original file, file
, as backup file file.bak
:
sed -i.bak 's/foo/bar/' file # Keep original as 'file.bak'; NO SPACE between -i and .bak
Even though with GNU sed
the suffix argument is optional, whereas with BSD/macOS sed
it is mandatory, the above syntax works with both implementations, because directly adjoining the option-argument (.bak
) to the option (-i
) - -i.bak
, as opposed to -i .bak
- works both as an optional and a mandatory option-argument:
-i.bak
is the only form that works for an optional option-argument.-i.bak
also works as a mandatory option-argument, as an alternative to -i .bak
, i.e., specifying the option and its argument separately.Not specifying a suffix - which is often the case - means that no backup file should be kept, and that is where the incompatibility arises:
With GNU sed
, not specifying a suffix means simply using -i
by itself.
With BSD/macOS sed
, not specifying a suffix means specifying the empty string as the - mandatory - suffix, and for technical reasons, the empty string can only be passed as a separate argument: that is, -i ''
not -i''
.
-i''
doesn't work, because to sed
it is indistinguishable from just -i
, because the shell effectively removes the empty quotes (it concatenates -i
and ''
and removes quotes with syntactical function), and passes just -i
in both cases.
With (effectively) just -i
specified, it is the next argument that is interpreted as the option-argument:
sed -i 's/foo/bar/' file # BREAKS with BSD/macOS Sed
's/foo/bar/'
- intended to the the Sed script (command) - is now interpreted as the suffix, and the word file
is interpreted as the script.
Interpreting such a word as script then leads to obscure error message such assed: 1: "file": invalid command code f
,
because the f
is interpreted as a Sed command (function).
Similarly, with:
sed -i -e 's/foo/bar/' file # CREATES BACKUP FILE 'file-e'
-e
is interpreted as the suffix argument, and NOT as Sed's -e
option (which can be used to specify multiple commands, if needed).
As as result, instead of keeping NO backup, you get a backup file with suffix -e
.
That this command doesn't work as intended is less obvious, because the in-place updating does succeed, given that the syntax requirement of the suffix argument is satisfied by the -e
argument.
That the accidental creation of these backup files easily goes unnoticed is the likeliest explanation for Crt's incorrect answer and this incorrect answer to a similar question having received so many up-votes (as of this writing).
[1] Strictly speaking, a temporary file is created behind the scenes that then replaces the original file; this approach can be problematic: see the bottom half of this answer of mine.
man is your friend.
-i extension
Edit files in-place, saving backups with the specified extension.
If a zero-length extension is given, no backup will be saved. It
is not recommended to give a zero-length extension when in-place
editing files, as you risk corruption or partial content in situ-
ations where disk space is exhausted, etc.
In OS X, you can use the GNU version of sed: gsed
.
# if using brew
brew install gnu-sed
#if using ports
sudo port install gsed
Then, if your script should be portable, depending on your OS you can define which command to use.
SED=sed
unamestr=`uname`
if [[ "$unamestr" == "Darwin" ]] ; then
SED=gsed
type $SED >/dev/null 2>&1 || {
echo >&2 "$SED it's not installed. Try: brew install gnu-sed" ;
exit 1;
}
fi
# here your sed command, e.g.:
$SED -i "/ $domain .*#drupalpro/d" /etc/hosts
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