escaping newlines in sed replacement string

bash unix sed escaping solaris
spraff picture spraff · Jan 24, 2012 · Viewed 22.1k times · Source

Here are my attempts to replace a b character with a newline using sed while running bash

$> echo 'abc' | sed 's/b/\n/'
anc

no, that's not it

$> echo 'abc' | sed 's/b/\\n/'
a\nc

no, that's not it either. The output I want is

a
c

HELP!

Answer

jaypal singh picture jaypal singh · Jan 24, 2012

Looks like you are on BSD or Solaris. Try this:

[jaypal:~/Temp] echo 'abc' | sed 's/b/\ 
> /'
a
c

Add a black slash and hit enter and complete your sed statement.

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