Using “sed” to find and replace a non atypical string

Question

I need to use sed in the terminal (no other option, I'm afraid) and I need to find and replace all sequences of four or more digits (no white spaces) with a specific word "brad". I have tried and tried to understand the manual but it is just so bad.

How do I do this? And while I am looking for the exact command, I would appreciate an explanation of why it works the way it does (the exact command used here that is).

already answered, but if you want to learn about sed...you might find this more informative then the man pages: ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-sed2/index.html

Birei · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-16 10:36:12Z

up vote 2 down vote accepted

One way:

sed 's/[0-9]\{4,\}/brad/g' infile

Explanation:

s/regex/replacement/flags
[0-9]              # Any digit.
\{4,\}             # Matched more or equal to 4 times.
brad               # Substitute matched string with literal 'brad'
/g                 # Apply it globally: Many times for each line.

answered Mar 16 '12 at 10:36

Birei
1562

	Thank you. I managed to get the s/[0-9]/brad/g before posting, but \{4,\} ... is that generally true in shell commands ? or is it "just here" ? – Kalec Mar 16 '12 at 10:40
	@Kalec: It depends. There are several regex flavours but syntax should be similar. – Birei Mar 16 '12 at 10:47

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Using “sed” to find and replace a non atypical string

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