~/cheatsheets/sed
Published on

sed

Using named blocks to delete text

cat << EOF > text
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut eu metus id lectus vestibulum ultrices. Maecenas rhoncus.
EOF

sed 's/^.*\(consectetuer.*elit\).*$/\1/' text

consectetuer adipiscing elit
  • s/^.* - substitute starting at the beginning of the line (^) followed by anything (.*) up to...
  • \( - start a named block
  • consectetuer.*elit\. - match the first word, everything (.*) up to the last word (in this case, including the trailing (escaped)dot) you want to match
  • \) - end the named block
  • match everything else (.*) to the end of the line ($)
  • / - end the substitute find section
  • \1 - replace with the name block between the \( and the \) above
  • / - end the replace

Quick reference

CommandDescription
sed '/^$/d'Remove blank lines
sed '/^ /d'Remove lines starting with two spaces
sed 's/^textToRemove//g'Remove text
echo "text::to::remove [TECAN,Text to Keep]" | sed "s/text::to::remove \[TECAN,//" | sed "s/\]//"Remove text