Input:
United+States
Output:
United States
I tried many times using sed without success.
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8
ilkkachu
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αԋɱҽԃ αмєяιcαη
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1echo "United+States" | sed "s/+/ /" – Kamaraj Jun 04 '18 at 08:59
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that will do the job only one time but in case if the plus sign repeated on the same line it's will not removed ! – αԋɱҽԃ αмєяιcαη Jun 04 '18 at 09:00
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9Then please [edit] your question and give an example that is representative of your input data. Also shows us what command you tried which failed and how it failed. Finally, please tell us what operating system you are using or, at least, which sed implementation because there are various differences between them. – terdon Jun 04 '18 at 09:01
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ok i will do it right now. – αԋɱҽԃ αмєяιcαη Jun 04 '18 at 09:02
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2You never did edit the question to say what commands you've tried. Hard to help without knowing that. – doneal24 Jun 04 '18 at 18:40
3 Answers
19
By default, sed uses basic regular expressions (BRE), where the plus sign is not special. So you can use it in the s command as you would use a regular character:
<<< 'United+States' sed 's/+/ /g'
If you want to modify a file with several instances in the same line (g) or with several lines
sed 's/+/ /g' filename
If you use extended regular expressions (ERE, sed -E in versions of sed that support it), then you need to escape the plus:
sed -E 's/\+/ /g' ...
(See this question for the difference between the regex variants.)
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What does plus mean though? What does dot mean? Been searching for ages, and all i can find are posts like this :( – Owl Apr 13 '22 at 14:55
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@Owl, Plus: + can have a special meaning and for that reason may need escaping if you want to treat it literally. -x is often used for an option. In some cases +x is used for the opposite option (to -x). See for example
man xterm. You can find other special meanings too. Don't forget the addtion operator. Dot: In this answer ... simply means some characters, but generally, dot can mean several things depending on the context. Inside a sed s expression dot means 'any [single] character'. – sudodus Apr 13 '22 at 16:06
10
$ echo 'United+States' | tr '+' ' '
United States
Since you're only changing single characters, it's quicker to do it with tr.
The equivalent sed script would look either like
$ echo 'United+States' | sed 'y/+/ /'
United States
or
$ echo 'United+States' | sed 's/+/ /g'
United States
The y command in sed replaces all occurrences of the first set of characters (only + here) with the corresponding character in the second set (only space here).
The s command replaces the text that matches a regular expression with some text. With g, it does it for every occurrence. Without it, only for the first one on each input line.
To change pluses to spaces only when they are flanked by words:
sed 's/\>+\</ /g'
This would change a+b to a b but would leave a + b and a++b unmodified.
The pattern \> matches the zero width space at the end of a word, and \< is analogous for the start of a word. GNU sed also understands \b (either start or end of a word), and BSD sed knows about [[:<:]] and [[:>:]] which works just like \< and \> respectively.
Kusalananda
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You can check this example and work according to achieve your result.
Example:- This code makes the change and writes the modified file to "songs2.txt". The output file contains:
1, Justin Timberlake, Title 545, Price $7.30
2, Taylor Swift, Title 723, Price $7.90
3, Mick Jagger, Title 610, Price $7.90
4, Lady Gaga, Title 118, Price $7.30
5, Johnny Cash, Title 482, Price $6.50
6, Elvis Presley, Title 335, Price $7.30
7, John Lennon, Title 271, Price $7.90
If you want to replace all occurrences of "Cash" with "Trash" you use:
sed 's/Cash/Trash/' songs.txt > songs2.txt
Reference Link:- A Quick Guide to Using Sed Commands in Linux
Eranda Peiris
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