My regex for replacing 'acronyms' does not work in sed, while it works elsewhere

Asked Mar 16 '22 at 08:37

Active Mar 16 '22 at 08:37

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I have tried this regex (in this example it should match "BMW" and "ALL") in other programs, where it does work:

$ sed -E 's/\b(?<![A-Z]\s)\b[A-Z]{2,}\b(?!\s[A-Z][A-Z])\b/REPLACED/gm;t;d' <<< "this BMW is ALL But"

I get this error message:

>>> sed: -e expression #1, char 60: Invalid preceding regular expression

Does anyone know why it doesn't work in sed, and what the possible workaround is?

asked Mar 16 '22 at 08:37

DataScience

If you need a perl regex use `perl`, `perl -pe 's/\b(?<![A-Z]\s)[A-Z]{2,}\b(?!\s[A-Z][A-Z])/REPLACED/g' file`. Sed does not support lookarounds. – Wiktor Stribiżew Mar 16 '22 at 08:45
Thank you @WiktorStribiżew! That is exactly what I require! – DataScience Mar 16 '22 at 09:01

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