Replace comma with newline in sed on MacOS?

Question

I have a file of strings that are comma separated. I'm trying to replace the commas with a new line. I've tried:

sed 's/,/\n/g' file

but it is not working. What am I missing?

What is the `g` in the end of the script for? I get the same behavior without it. — HelloGoodbye, May 27 '15 at 11:41
What shell are you using? This works for me, using the bash shell. — HelloGoodbye, May 27 '15 at 11:47
@HelloGoodbye The `g` will replace all instances of a character, whereas having no `g` will only only replace the first instance of that character per line. — mchid, Jan 10 '18 at 21:43
Excuse me, @PrinceJohnWesley : is there any advantage on no piping? Maybe faster processing, or better RAM management? — Sopalajo de Arrierez, Jan 25 '18 at 18:17
See also the reversed question: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/114943/can-sed-replace-new-line-characters — ryenus, Apr 17 '19 at 04:02

score 414 · Accepted Answer · answered May 25 '12 at 16:27

414

Use tr instead:

tr , '\n' < file

answered May 25 '12 at 16:27

Prince John Wesley

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It is not wokring in bash shell $ tr , '\n' aitr usage: tr [-Ccsu] string1 string2 tr [-Ccu] -d string1 tr [-Ccu] -s string1 tr [-Ccu] -ds string1 string2 – Learner Jan 20 '16 at 18:41
6

Replacing a comma with a semicolon also works: `tr ',' ';' < input.csv > output.csv` – Wim Deblauwe Feb 24 '16 at 09:29

score 347 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 29 '19 at 14:57

347

Use an ANSI-C quoted string $'string'

You need a backslash-escaped literal newline to get to sed. In bash at least, $'' strings will replace \n with a real newline, but then you have to double the backslash that sed will see to escape the newline, e.g.

echo "a,b" | sed -e $'s/,/\\\n/g'

Note this will not work on all shells, but will work on the most common ones.

edited Nov 29 '19 at 14:57

miken32

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answered Aug 23 '13 at 19:06

Walter Mundt

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strange, it also works with one backslash less i.e. `echo "a,b" | sed -e $'s/,/\\n/g`. – Alexandre Holden Daly Jul 02 '14 at 19:08
2

Upvoted. For more info see the "QUOTING" section of `man bash`. – tboyce12 Apr 01 '15 at 18:23
9

Got it working with OSX 10.11 : `sed -E $'s/<\\/br>/\\\n/g' file`, no need to install gnu-sed – bric3 Jun 14 '16 at 14:01
4

Verified working on OS X 10.7 with the given example. The `-e` part seems not necessary. – Yongwei Wu Jul 22 '16 at 06:53
OSX 10.10.5 requires 3 backslashes: `sed $'s/:/\\\n'/g <<<$PATH` – 7stud Jan 14 '17 at 09:47
1

This is awesome! Using this with `fzf` for debugging my $PATH in case something is missing: `echo $PATH | sed -e $'s/:/\\\n/g' | fzf` ^.^ – SidOfc Aug 31 '17 at 18:02
@Brice I think that `gsed -e 's/,/\n/g'` works on gnu-sed version 4.4-1. – mchid Jan 10 '18 at 21:34
I don't seem to need the '-e': `echo foo,bar | sed $'s/,/\\n/g'`. ubuntu. sed (GNU sed) 4.2.2 – Hawkeye Parker Jul 09 '18 at 19:11
Thanks, is there any documentation reference on that please? – smarber Aug 17 '19 at 16:50
1

@YongweiWu, the `-e` is implicit if you only provide one command. If more than one command is wanted: `sed -e 's/foo/bar' -e 's/boo/far'`. – Daghall Sep 17 '20 at 06:53

score 134 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 07 '12 at 20:24

134

sed 's/,/\
/g'

works on Mac OS X.

answered Sep 07 '12 at 20:24

Max Nanasy

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Thanks for this - Wondered why my old linux trick didn't work in OSX. But this does! – Wyatt Ward May 10 '14 at 18:18
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This is the only solution that works in a sed script. – Firstrock May 12 '14 at 19:12
6

Note that the backslash *escapes* the literal newline (so that it's not a command terminator): it is *not* a line continuation character (as in bash, etc.). To see the difference, try to write the above command without the quotes: the backslash will instead be interpreted by the shell as a line continuation character and it and the newline will be discarded. Conversely, include the contents of the quoted expression (without quotes) in a separate comma-to-newline.sed file (which eliminates shell syntax), and it works! – Nils von Barth Oct 11 '14 at 04:06
2

this is good since it can replace anything, not a character. tr seems work with only characters. if you put a string as first parameter, it will replace all the occurrence of the characters, not the string. – Shawn Mar 09 '15 at 20:03
I'm on Yosemite, and I couldn't get this to work until I switched the escaped literal newline with *two* backslashes, not one. – yurisich Aug 05 '15 at 20:27
1

@Droogans Are you using bash, sh, or a different shell? Are you sure you're using single quotes instead of double quotes? – Max Nanasy Aug 10 '15 at 07:09
I can confirm it doesn't work on Yosemite. I'm using single quotes, and it doesn't work for me on OSX 10.10.5. No matter how many backslashes I use, I get the error: invalid command code \ – 7stud Jan 14 '17 at 09:51
This gave me a clue. I did this in the end: `sed $'s/,/\\\n/'` to keep everything on one line – Wivlaro Feb 14 '17 at 12:50

nar8789 · Answer 4 · 2019-05-29T23:57:49.410

26

If your sed usage tends to be entirely substitution expressions (as mine tends to be), you can also use perl -pe instead

$ echo 'foo,bar,baz' | perl -pe 's/,/,\n/g'
foo,
bar,
baz

edited May 29 '19 at 23:57

answered Apr 15 '14 at 23:23

nar8789

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Felix · Answer 5 · 2020-01-17T05:59:51.353

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MacOS is different, there is two way to solve this problem with sed in mac

first ,use \'$'\n'' replace \n, it can work in MacOS:
```
sed 's/,/\'$'\n''/g' file
```
the second, just use an empty line:
```
sed 's/,/\
/g' file
```
Ps. Pay attention the range separated by '
the third, use gnu-sed replace the mac-sed

edited Jan 17 '20 at 05:59

answered Mar 13 '18 at 09:32

Felix

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score 17 · Answer 6 · edited Aug 10 '13 at 17:55

17

Apparently \r is the key!

$ sed 's/, /\r/g' file3.txt > file4.txt

Transformed this:

ABFS, AIRM, AMED, BOSC, CALI, ECPG, FRGI, GERN, GTIV, HSON, IQNT, JRCC, LTRE,
MACK, MIDD, NKTR, NPSP, PME, PTIX, REFR, RSOL, UBNT, UPI, YONG, ZEUS

To this:

ABFS
AIRM
AMED
BOSC
CALI
ECPG
FRGI
GERN
GTIV
HSON
IQNT
JRCC
LTRE
MACK
MIDD
NKTR
NPSP
PME
PTIX
REFR
RSOL
UBNT
UPI
YONG
ZEUS

edited Aug 10 '13 at 17:55

Chris Seymour

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answered Aug 10 '13 at 17:51

I know the question says OS X, but this doesn't work with GNU sed-4.2.2-6.fc20.x86_64. – Cristian Ciupitu May 25 '14 at 02:49
11

Keep in mind that `\r` is not the same as `\n`, and this might break further data manipulation and usage. – Joel Purra Oct 11 '14 at 13:16
3

Sorry, this didn't work for me. I just got an 'r' where there should be a newline. – Frank de Groot - Schouten May 31 '17 at 14:17
You should make it more clear in the answer that this gives `\r`! – pir Aug 27 '17 at 22:34
It worked for me but I wonder why! \n is the standard on unix https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1761051/difference-between-n-and-r – Zioalex Jan 15 '19 at 15:34
This didn't work for me either. I'm on macos 10.13 using /usr/bin/sed. – Chris Sep 05 '19 at 16:07

score 15 · Answer 7 · edited Oct 11 '14 at 13:21

This works on MacOS Mountain Lion (10.8), Solaris 10 (SunOS 5.10) and RHE Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.3, Tikanga)...

$ sed 's/{pattern}/\^J/g' foo.txt > foo2.txt

... where the ^J is done by doing ctrl+v+j. Do mind the \ before the ^J.

PS, I know the sed in RHEL is GNU, the MacOS sed is FreeBSD based, and although I'm not sure about the Solaris sed, I believe this will work pretty much with any sed. YMMV tho'...

score 7 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 17 '13 at 11:35

7

To make it complete, this also works:

echo "a,b" | sed "s/,/\\$(echo -e '\n\r')/"

answered Jul 17 '13 at 11:35

ryenus

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This would also be fitting for the Obfuscated C contest, except it's Bash ;) – Aaron R. Mar 17 '14 at 20:31
@AaronR. I agree :-). Surely I prefer the `tr` solution, which is already the accepted answer. – ryenus Mar 24 '14 at 07:49
1

This worked on OS X. Why is it `\n\r` instead of `\r\n`? I tried `\r\n` which is the necessary order on Windows. However, after I do this it's leaving a lot of `^M` carriage return characters in `vim`, so I think it's supposed to be only `\n` but `\n` alone doesn't work. – NobleUplift Mar 24 '17 at 18:09

score 4 · Answer 9 · edited Oct 11 '14 at 04:31

4

Though I am late to this post, just updating my findings. This answer is only for Mac OS X.

$ sed 's/new/
> /g' m1.json > m2.json
sed: 1: "s/new/
/g": unescaped newline inside substitute pattern

In the above command I tried with Shift+Enter to add new line which didn't work. So this time I tried with "escaping" the "unescaped newline" as told by the error.

$ sed 's/new/\
> /g' m1.json > m2.json

Worked! (in Mac OS X 10.9.3)

edited Oct 11 '14 at 04:31

Nils von Barth

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answered Jun 17 '14 at 23:31

user2300875

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This is no different than Max Nanasy's answer two years before yours. – miken32 Feb 05 '16 at 19:08

score 3 · Answer 10 · answered Apr 26 '19 at 14:01

3

$ echo $PATH | sed -e $'s/:/\\\n/g' 
/usr/local/sbin
/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2/sdk
/usr/local/bin

...

Works for me on Mojave

answered Apr 26 '19 at 14:01

Paulo Henrique Lellis Gonalves

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score 2 · Answer 11 · answered Aug 20 '13 at 08:12

Just to clearify: man-page of sed on OSX (10.8; Darwin Kernel Version 12.4.0) says:

[...]

Sed Regular Expressions

 The regular expressions used in sed, by default, are basic regular expressions (BREs, see re_format(7) for more information), but extended
 (modern) regular expressions can be used instead if the -E flag is given.  In addition, sed has the following two additions to regular
 expressions:

 1.   In a context address, any character other than a backslash (``\'') or newline character may be used to delimit the regular expression.
      Also, putting a backslash character before the delimiting character causes the character to be treated literally.  For example, in the
      context address \xabc\xdefx, the RE delimiter is an ``x'' and the second ``x'' stands for itself, so that the regular expression is
      ``abcxdef''.

 2.   The escape sequence \n matches a newline character embedded in the pattern space.  You cannot, however, use a literal newline charac-
      ter in an address or in the substitute command.

[...]

so I guess one have to use tr - as mentioned above - or the nifty

sed "s/,/^M
/g"

note: you have to type <ctrl>-v,<return> to get '^M' in vi editor

DawnSong · Answer 12 · 2021-02-16T06:10:14.353

2

The sed on macOS Mojave was released in 2005, so one solution is to install the gnu-sed,

brew install gnu-sed

then use gsed will do as you wish,

gsed 's/,/\n/g' file

If you prefer sed, just sudo sh -c 'echo /usr/local/opt/gnu-sed/libexec/gnubin > /etc/paths.d/brew', which is suggested by brew info gnu-sed. Restart your term, then your sed in command line is gsed.

edited Feb 16 '21 at 06:10

answered May 24 '19 at 07:11

DawnSong

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score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Oct 30 '14 at 15:36

0

FWIW, the following line works in windows and replaces semicolons in my path variables with a newline. I'm using the tools installed under my git bin directory.

echo %path% | sed -e $'s/;/\\n/g' | less

answered Oct 30 '14 at 15:36

Jeff LaFay

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score -1 · Answer 14 · answered Feb 25 '22 at 09:39

-1

I have found another command that is working also.

find your_filename.txt -type f -exec sed -i 's/,/\n/g' {} \;

answered Feb 25 '22 at 09:39

shawon

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Replace comma with newline in sed on MacOS?

14 Answers14

Sed Regular Expressions

Linked

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