sed command: bad flag in substitute command: '/'

Question

I am having challenges formatting some files. I want to delete everything between the [&lnP until the [&R] in the file1.trees and then create a new file called file1_edit.trees. But I am getting the error 'bad flag in substitute command: '/''

 sed -i '' 's/[&lnP/,/[&R]/{//!d;}/g' file1.trees > file1_edit.trees Error --->> sed: 1: "s/[&lnP/,/[&R]/{//!d;}/g": bad flag in substitute command: '/'

escape square brackets, remove rediection as you are doing inplace updates. — SMA
– SMA, Commented Oct 4, 2017 at 11:46
Not sure, but maybe you means sed 's/[&lnP\/,/[&R]/{\/!d;}/g' — Arount
– Arount, Commented Oct 4, 2017 at 11:49
It's not completely clear what you're trying to achieve - could you edit to add a (small) sample input and expected output? As it is, I can't tell whether you're trying to s (substitute) within a line or to d (delete) a range of lines. — Toby Speight
– Toby Speight, Commented Oct 4, 2017 at 12:27

SMA · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-04 11:50:43Z

Assuming you want to replace "[&lnP/,/[&R]" with "{//!d;}", your command should be:

sed 's/\[&lnP\/,\/\[&R\]/{\/\/!d;}/g' file1.trees > file1_edit.trees

You would need to escape characters which would get confused with search/replace part by having forward slash. Also escape characters which would be treated as a special characters in regex (meta characters).

Also remove -i flag which would do the changes inplace into the file.

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