How to combine sed 'sentences'?

Question

I made this script:

xrandr | grep '*' | sed 's/\S*\(*+\)\S*//g'| sed 's/ //g' | sed 's/x.*//'

How can I combine the three sed commands:

into a single command?

I'm running sed three to do this job. My question is: how to use only one sed to do the same thing. — user2079266, Feb 27 '13 at 23:27
You have (at least) 4 different answers, each of them accurate and each providing an alternative way to do the same job. Let no-one say your choices are limited. The answer by William Pursell should probably 'win' because he points out that the `grep` is unnecessary. — Jonathan Leffler, Feb 27 '13 at 23:34
No need N `sed` at all, I use only 1 `grep` (or 1 `perl`) =) — Gilles Quénot, Feb 27 '13 at 23:39

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:26

3

With -e:

xrandr | grep '*' | sed -e 's/\S*\(*+\)\S*//g' -e 's/ //g' -e 's/x.*//'

Note that the grep is not necessary:

xrandr | sed -e '/\*/!d' -e 's/\S*\(*+\)\S*//g' -e 's/ //g' -e 's/x.*//'

answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:26

William Pursell

squiguy · Answer 2 · 2013-02-27T23:33:37.043

3

You could put those commands in a file called sedscr for example, one per line as such:

s/x.*//
s/ //g
s/\S*\(*+\)\S*//g

And then call:

xrandr | grep '*' | sed -f sedscr

I prefer this method, just in case I want to add more commands in the future.

edited Feb 27 '13 at 23:33

answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:27

squiguy

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:26

1

You can simply consider all sed commands as script and add a ; between commands :

xrandr | grep '*' | sed 's/\S*\(*+\)\S*//g ; s/ //g ; s/x.*//'

answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:26

Zulu

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:28

1

With newlines :

echo coobas | sed 's:c:f:
s:s:r:'

answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:28

Gilles Quénot

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:31

0

Without sed but just grep :

$ xrandr | grep -oP '^\s+\K\d+(?=.*?\*)'
1440

or with perl :

$ xrandr | perl -lne 'print $1 if /^\s+(\d+)(?=.*?\*)/'
1440

answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:31

Gilles Quénot

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:33

0

Another thing to consider is to make a sed config file (call it config.sed) listing all replacement rules. E.g.:

1,/^END/{
   s/x.*//
   s/ //g
   s/\S*\(*+\)\S*//g
}

and then run

sed -f config.sed filein.txt > fileout.txt

answered Feb 27 '13 at 23:33

amphibient

6 Answers6