While bulk editing your files with “sed ” like a boss as you are, there might be a chance the terminal returned a very confusing, disturbing and inconvenient error in the midst of your business.
You probably had this “sed ” command do the work for you as you watch the beautiful sky.
sed -i 's/search_string/replace_string/' filename
Or another variant of the same
sed -i 's@search_string:@replace_string@g' filename;
While you were enjoying the view, you might have noticed that the command you ran ended but on further investigation, you realise there is an ugly message waiting for you with a grin.
It might have gone like:
sed: 1: “filename: command c expects \ followed by text
After a couple of second-guessing and syntax checking, you discover everything is okay with your command and then you decided to go on an online spree to see if other people have ever had the same miracle as you. Thanks for the issue, here you are and here comes the solution to your problem.
The cause
It turns out that “sed ” installed on your Mac and the one on your Linux are a bit different. The “sed” in your Mac is shipped from BSD and has some subtle differences with the “sed” you will find in your precious Linux distro.
The Solution
After going through the “man pages” and a couple of web pages later, we found out that you need to provide the backup extension when you invoke the -i switch, like this
sed -i'.backup' ’s@search_string:@replace_string@g' filename;
Or
sed -i'.backup’ 's/search_string/replace_string/' filename
Remember that the “_.backup_” can be any wordings you like
And you should be happy thereafter 😁.
Concluding Remarks
Thank you for visiting and we hope this solution works for you as you edit your files with ease leveraging the power of “sed”. Have a wonderful
one.
