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Greg_the_Ant
Asked: 2012-03-15 10:55:49 +0800 CST

Why isn't sed working?

  • 772

I have a file that has a single line with a lot of ! characters. I want to remove all of the ! characters.

I tried this:

sed s/!// myfile

and this:

sed 's/!//' myfile

and this:

sed 's/"\!*"//' myfile

But they all just print out all of the "!".

I must be missing something obvious. Any ideas?

linux unix replace sed

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Add a g to your regexp, for global replacement. Otherwise, only the first occurrence will be substituted: 

    sed s/\!//g myfile
    • 7

  2. Try this:

    $ sed s/\!//g myfile
    • 4

  3. Don't forget poor old tr

    tr -d '!' < filename

    tr only operates on stdin, so you have to pipe data into it.

    • 4

  4. add the g at the end in order to replace all occurances.

    sed 's/"!*"//g' myfile

    • 2

  5. You have to specify you want every occurence removed: sed 's/!//g' myfile
    Note the g, which mean 'greedy'.
    Without the 'g', you only have the first '!' removed

    • 2