// plain

The sed command is a powerful utility for editing text files from the command line. It can be used to perform complex search and replace operations.

To use sed, you must provide a query string that describes the search and replace operations you want to perform. Here is an example of a sed query:

sed -i 's/old_word/new_word/g' file.txt

This query will search for all instances of old_word in file.txt and replace them with new_word. The -i flag tells sed to edit the file in-place.

Here is a breakdown of the command parts:

• sed: the command itself
• -i: the flag that tells sed to edit the file in-place
• s/old_word/new_word/g: the search and replace query, which consists of:
  • s: the search and replace operation
  • old_word: the word to search for
  • new_word: the word to replace with
  • g: the global flag, which tells sed to replace all occurrences of old_word
• file.txt: the file to edit

For more information on sed, see the GNU sed Manual.

onelinerhub: How do I use a CLI sed query?