SED to replace strings containing CR LF

Question

I am trying to replace a string that contains CR and LF in the text of a file.

So the input file

abcd
efgh
ijkl

Becomes

abcd
zxgh
ijkl

literally I wish the string "cd + CR + LF + ef" to be replaced with "cd + CR + LF + zx". I have tried

sed -e 's/cd\red/cd\rzx/g' file
sed -e 's/cd\r\ned/cd\r\nzx/g' file

without success

Does this answer your question? [Remove carriage return in Unix](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/800030/remove-carriage-return-in-unix) — Benjamin W., May 20 '20 at 18:07

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 20 '20 at 16:23

1

Switch to Perl.

perl -0777 -pe 's/cd\r\nef/cd\r\nzx/' file

Or with GNU sed:

sed '/cd\r$/{N;s/cd\r\nef/cd\r\nzx/}' file

Output:

abcd
zxgh
ijkl

answered May 20 '20 at 16:23

Cyrus

thank you. i also has to use the command `unix2dos file` to make it work. – xavi May 20 '20 at 17:01

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 20 '20 at 16:30

0

With sed, you can do it as follows:

sed '/cd\r$/N;s/cd\r\nef/cd\r\nzx/' file

answered May 20 '20 at 16:30

Pierre François

thank you. i also has to use the command `unix2dos file` to make it work. – xavi May 20 '20 at 17:02

2 Answers2