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Date:      Wed, 17 Mar 1999 18:39:00 -0500 (EST)
From:      "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD Questions)
Subject:   sed and newlines
Message-ID:  <199903172339.SAA06674@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>

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The sed manpage says,

Sed Regular Expressions
     The sed regular expressions are basic regular expressions (BRE's, see
     regex(3) for more information).  In addition, sed has the following two
     additions to BRE's:
     .
     .
     .
     2.   The escape sequence \n matches a newline character embedded in the
          pattern space.  You can't, however, use a literal newline character
          in an address or in the substitute command.

If I am reading this correctly,

% sed 's/\n/   /' file

Should take the file and subsitute three spaces in place of every
newline. However, it does not. It does not seem to understand '\n.'

In spite of what it says, I have tried literal newlines (with \ and
^V), and as claimed on the manpage, it does not work (it will
generate errors).

Am I missing something obvious? Or is sed broken?

Thanks.
-- 
Crist J. Clark                           cjclark@home.com


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