[OT] sed question

Matthew Seaman m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk
Sun Mar 14 14:45:30 PST 2004


On Sun, Mar 14, 2004 at 04:30:40PM -0600, Steven N. Fettig wrote:
> Sorry for posting an off-topic question to the list, but this is 
> somethin that has been driving me nuts for weeks now and I can't figure 
> it out.  I want to pass a text file through sed that replaces all 
> whitespaces with a carriage return.  I.e., if I have the file 
> my_test_text_document.txt that is a few paragraphs of writing, I want to 
> take the following input:
> 
> I have just written five paragraphs of absolute jibberish and wish that 
> I could get sed to work the way that I want.  Oh how this question has 
> plagued me!
> 
> And have sed output:
> I
> have
> just
> written
> five
> paragraphs
> of
> absolute
> jibberish
> and
> ... you get the point.
> 
> I can't figure out what the newline character is... I've tried \n \r &\, 
> etc. with no avail.  I run the following:
> 
> sed 's/[ ]/\n/g' my_test_text_document.txt
> 
> and the output never has a newline added regardless of what I have 
> substituted \n with.  I have also used " instead of ' and that hasn't 
> helped...
> Sorry for the question, but I'd really appreciate the help!

sed(1) can do it, but it's cleaner and simpler to use tr(1):

    % cat foo
    I have just written five paragraphs of absolute jibberish and wish that 
    I could get sed to work the way that I want.  Oh how this question has 
    plagued me!
    % tr -s ' ' '\n' < foo
    I
    have
    just
    written
    five
    paragraphs
    of
    absolute
    jibberish
    and
    wish
    that
    I
    could
    get
    sed
    to
    work
    the
    way
    that
    I
    want.
    Oh
    how
    this
    question
    has
    plagued
    me!
    
	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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