How to add new line using sed on MacOS?

Question

I wanted to add a new line between </a> and <a><a>

</a><a><a>

</a>
<a><a>

I did this

sed 's#</a><a><a>#</a>\n<a><a>#g' filename but it didn't work.

Thanks for the comment. I tried with 's' but still didn't work — codereviewanskquestions, May 15 '13 at 22:45
What do you mean "didn't work"? Wrong output? Error message? Something else? — hammar, May 15 '13 at 22:48
Replace \n with \x0D, credit to: https://stackoverflow.com/a/27909903/1682506 — Yogi Valani, Jan 12 '18 at 11:59

score 36 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 05 '14 at 16:46

36

Powered by mac in two Interpretation:

answered Mar 05 '14 at 16:46

Max

2

How can I install gsed on a mac? – a06e Aug 27 '17 at 12:34
The solution #1 should be marked as the most correct answer to this question. – msaltieri Sep 18 '17 at 15:27
4

ELI5? Please? I don't understand why we're escaping the single quote before the dollar sign. – UFL1138 Jan 08 '18 at 19:00
1

@becko You can install `gsed` using Homebrew: `brew install gsed`. – Carmen Sandoval May 13 '18 at 02:18
2

The way (1) works, it concatenates 2 strings, the first one is literally "s/f/f\", the dollar sign before second string expands "\n" to the actual new-line character. That way, `sed` receives following string: `s/f/f\↵/`. – nonsleepr May 31 '18 at 14:39
2

I got gsed with `brew install gnu-sed`. – webjay Nov 08 '18 at 14:26
The problem with this one is that Xcode doesn't know how to correctly highlight the syntax. – Iulian Onofrei Jun 30 '19 at 11:41
how to do this when the sed string must be quoted to include a bash variable? – slashdottir May 14 '21 at 20:16

score 24 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 30 '19 at 12:37

24

Some seds, notably Mac / BSD, don't interpret \n as a newline, you need to use an actual newline, preceded by a backslash:

$ echo foo | sed 's/f/f\n/'
fnoo
$ echo foo | sed 's/f/f\
> /'
f
oo
$

Or you can use:

echo foo | sed $'s/f/f\\\n/'

edited Jun 30 '19 at 12:37

Iulian Onofrei

answered May 15 '13 at 22:51

Kevin

And if you need to change '\n' --> NEWLINE you should use 2 steps: cat file | sed 's/\\n/±/g' | sed $'s/±/\\\n/g'. Note '±' is random character, not used in stream. – Andzej Wal Jul 12 '22 at 14:49
echo foo | sed $'s/f/f\\\n/' worked for me. – Cédric ZUGER Aug 22 '22 at 07:06

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 23 '18 at 21:51

0

...or you just pound on it! worked for me on insert on mac / osx:

  sed "2 i \\\n${TEXT}\n\n" -i ${FILE_PATH_NAME}
  sed "2 i \\\nSomeText\n\n" -i textfile.txt

answered Oct 23 '18 at 21:51

muet

1

Can you give more information about the mac osx version? I have this output `sed: 1: "2 i \\nSomeText\n\n": extra characters after \ at the end of i command` – Yohan W. Dunon Jul 05 '21 at 13:04

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 12 '23 at 20:55

on macOS 13.5 Ventura, 2023, this works:

sed -i '' '2i\'$'\n''line 2'$'\n' x

Which insert a line 2 into the existing file x, this new line containing “line 2”

Best operating system in the world according to Apple

4 Answers4