Using sed with ^A

Question

I have a file with contents like this:

name^Agroup^Ahost
name^Agroup^Ahost    
name^Agroup^Ahost

and I need it to be like this:

name group host
name group host
name group host

Trying the following, but none working:

sed -i 's/\^A/ /g' thefile.file
sed -i 's/^A/ /g' thefile.file

Help?

Your first attempt looks fine to me. I suspect that you don't actually have those characters `^A` in the file but they're being rendered like that due to an encoding issue. — Tom Fenech, Apr 01 '16 at 12:48

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 01 '16 at 12:47

1

Use tr instead:

tr '\001' ' ' < inputfile

In sed, ^ doesn't mean Ctrl, but beginning-of-line.

answered Apr 01 '16 at 12:47

Roland Illig

Thanks Roland - Typing ctrl+a to produce the ^A sequence works surprisingly :-D – lordNibbler Apr 01 '16 at 12:57

1 Answers1