80

I want to run a simple command of replacing absolute paths to relative ones inside a CSS file like this:

sed -i 's/\/fonts/../fonts/' /Users/sergeybasharov/WebstormProjects/snap/compiled/Content/stylesheets/style.css

It throws this

sed: 1: "/Users/sergeybasharov/W ...": bad flag in substitute command: 'b'

What can be wrong in this simple script?

Improve this question
6
  • There's no b anywhere in your command, it must not be what you actually typed. Please paste the actual script. Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 19:54
  • Yes, really, just used a shorter equivalent :). I have updated to the full variant. Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 19:55
  • There's some issue with your quoting that's causing the filename to be included in the subsitute command, but I don't see it in what you've quoted. You're missing a backslash, though. Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 20:01
  • 2
    The error you're reporting would happen if you had -e before the filename or you were missing the s/\fonts command at the beginning. It's treating the filename as a sed instruction. Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 20:03
  • I have read man for sed. It's written there that after -i I should use extension that is used to make a backup file. If empty string is provided, then no backup will be created. So I have put it like -i '' and it worked. Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 20:09

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
107

In your command s/\/fonts/../fonts/ is being taken as the parameter to the -i option (the suffix to use for the backup file), and the filename argument is being treated as the editing commands.

You need to specify to disable the backup file creation:

sed -i '' ...

In your example:

sed -i '' 's/\/fonts/../fonts/' /Users/sergeybasharov/WebstormProjects/snap/compiled/Content/stylesheets/style.css

Computers are dumb, they don't figure things out by context, so they can't tell that something beginning with s/ is obviously an editing command, not a suffix.

Improve this answer
Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

5 Comments

+1, interesting, in Windows I don't have this problem, I must always use double quotes.
@Endoro The type of quotes are irrelevant in this case, the important thing is that you have to have an explicit argument there.
Maybe in OSX sed, in GNU sed -i works without an argument. Good to know :)
@purpletech See stackoverflow.com/questions/4247068/…
You're a star Barmar! On a Mac this is what you need. Thanks-
44

sed -i 's/\/fonts/../fonts/' is not a valid sed command, try sed -i 's#/fonts#../fonts#'

Improve this answer

1 Comment

Totally forgot you can use different delimiters in sed. This solved my issue because my substitution contained slashes. Brilliant!
25

I was having a similar issue. You can install the GNU version of sed in your Mac, called gsed, and use it using the standard Linux syntax.

For that, install gsed using ports (if you don't have it, get it at http://www.macports.org/) by running sudo port install gsed. Then, you can run:

gsed -i 's/old_pattern/new_pattern/g' *
Improve this answer

2 Comments

Equivalent if using homebrew is brew install gnu-sed
Worked like a charm with gsed.. I did install gsed on mac using brew install gsed
11

in sed you can use any character to split, in my case I had / in one of the strings hence the error so I had to replace / with | in the sed split; hope this helps others

STRING1="something/somethingelse" STRING2="clean" sed -i '' "s|${STRING1}|${STRING2}|g" FILE
Improve this answer

Comments

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.