[ale] SED

[michael d. ivey]

On Tue, Nov 30, 1999 at 04:30:53PM -0500, Thorsten Hofrichter wrote:
> HAve a sed question. 
> I have been trying to figure this out for a few minutes now
> how do I substitute a character for a new line
> example a file that contains a,b,c,d
> I need it to output 
> a
> b
> c
> d
> I need to use sed for this and have tried doing 
> cat filename | sed s/,/\\n/g
> I have read man pages but dont understant why that would not work
> Any ideas??

$ cat filename | sed -e 's/,/\
/'

yes, that is a \ followed by a literal <newline>.  from my sed
manpage:

       This version of sed supports a \<newline> sequence in  all
       regular  expressions, the replacement part of a substitute (s)
       command, and  in  the  source  and  dest parts  of  a
       transliterate  (y)  command.   The  \ is stripped, and the
       newline is kept.

YMMV.


-- 
-- michael d. ivey, chief thinker  --- <ivey at gweezlebur.com> -----------
------ gweezle bur poetry manufacturing  <http://gweezlebur.com> -------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Moderation is a fatal thing.  Nothing succeeds like excess."   -- Wilde