sd/README.md
2018-12-23 19:44:57 -05:00

32 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown

# sd - s[earch] & d[isplace]
`sd` is a simple, user-friendly find & replace command line tool.
## Features
**Painless regular expressions**
Use regex syntax that you already know from JavaScript, Python, and Rust. No need to learn special syntax or eccentrisms of `sed` or `awk`. Easily access your captured groups with `$1`, `$2`.
**String-literal mode**
In string-literal mode, you don't need to escape any special characters - its simply unnecessary.
**Easy to read, easy to write**
Find & replace expressions are split up and in most cases unescaped, which contributes to readability and makes it easier to spot errors in your regexes.
## Comparison to sed
Some cherry-picked examples, where `sd` shines:
- Replace newlines with commas:
- sed: `sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\r/,/g'` vs
- sd: `sd -r '\r' ','`
- Extracting stuff out of strings with special characters
- sd: `echo "{((sample with /path/))}" | sd -r '\{\(\(.*(/.*/)\)\)\}' '$1'`
- sed
- incorrect, but closest I could get after 15 minutes of struggle
- `echo "{((sample string also contains /path/))}" | sed 's/{((\.\*\(\/.*\/\)))}/\1/g'`
Note: although `sed` has a nicer regex syntax with `-r`, it is not portable and doesn't work on, say, MacOS or Solaris.