Sed regex problem on Mac, works fine on Linux

Question

This works fine on Linux (Debian):

sed -e 's,^[ \t]*psd\(.*\)\;,,' 

On mac, I believe I have to use the -E flag, instead of -e:

sed -E 's,^[ \t]*psd\(.*\)\;,,'

but the regexp does not match, and hence does not remove the lines I want.

Any tips on how to solve this?

Sample input:

apa
bepa
    psd(cepa);
depa psd(epa);
  psd(fepa gepa hepa);

For that input, the expected output is:

apa
bepa
depa psd(epa);

Answer 1

The -E flag means to use extended regular expressions. You should just use -e, as on Linux. The sed in Mac OS X is based on BSD sed, so doesn't have the GNU extensions.

After copying your sample input:

[~ 507] pbpaste | sed -e 's,^[[:space:]]*psd\(.*\);,,'
apa
bepa

depa psd(epa);

Answer 2

The '\t' is not standard in 'sed', it is a GNU extension.

To match a 'tab', you need to put a real 'tab' in your script. This is easy in a file, harder in shell.

The same problem can happen in AIX, Solaris and HP-UX or other UNIXes.