Use sed with regular expression for space

Question

I am trying to use sed to substitute a string taking into account an whitespace.
Example:

Hello          World

to be replaced by

Hello George

I tried:

sed -e 's/Hello[:space]+World/Hello George/' ./infile > outFile

but it does not work.

How can I fix this?

[:space:] and not [:space], I think. Also, [[:space:]], otherwise the square brackets will be misinterpreted. — January
– January, Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 9:57

doubleDown · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-22 10:00:50Z

4

sed -e 's/Hello[[:space:]]\+World/Hello George/' ./infile > outFile

or

sed -e 's/Hello \+World/Hello George/' ./infile > outFile

Note: In OSX, you'll need

sed -E 's/Hello +World/Hello George/' ./infile > outFile

answered Oct 22, 2012 at 10:00

doubleDown

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2 Comments

Jim Over a year ago

This works.Is there a case I would prefer using \+ over [[:space:]]?Is it available always?

doubleDown Over a year ago

I think [[:space:]] includes tabs as well and maybe a few other, whereas ` ` is just... well... single space. Both should always be available (in sed)

Vijay · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-22 10:06:21Z

1

may be you can go with perl:

perl -pe 's/Hello\s*World/Hello Goerge/g'

answered Oct 22, 2012 at 10:06

Vijay

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Comments

alestanis · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-22 09:59:14Z

0

You can use

sed -e 's/Hello\s\+World/Hello George/' ./infile > outFile

The code for space is \s, same as \w would be for word characters.

answered Oct 22, 2012 at 9:59

alestanis

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4 Comments

January Over a year ago

Nope, you don't have to use that form, the [:space:] can be used as well and is better in some cases (unicode, changed locales etc.)

January Over a year ago

@alestanis: I have explained above.

alestanis Over a year ago

@January you're right about the have to. I edited my answer.

January Over a year ago

@alestanis: but you have still a problem with the +, which, in "standard" sed is interpreted literally (to have a quantifier, you need to use \+).

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