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I have string "[9920380315,POSTPAID,0009,646.26,SELF,APPLICATION]"

in that I want to remove first "[" but unable to do this using below command, 

sed 's/[//g'
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  • 1
    tr -d '[' (assuming a POSIX tr). Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 14:55
  • Where is this string stored? In a variable or in a text file? Commented Jan 27, 2022 at 21:21

6 Answers 6

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Try doing this :

sed 's/\[//'

The [ ] are special metacharacters used to match a character from a set (like [a-z]).

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  • On another note, you will be able to replace [ without the escape character :) Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 18:00
  • No Sree: sed: -e expression #1, char 5: unterminated s' command` Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 18:21
  • @sputnick I think that error came from an unterminated s. I had asked a question here a few days back unix.stackexchange.com/questions/168240/… Commented Nov 28, 2014 at 8:08
  • @Sree As the answer to your question explains, you can't use an unescaped [ Commented Apr 29, 2019 at 12:14
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start cmd:> echo "[9920380315,POSTPAID,0009,646.26,SELF,APPLICATION]" | sed 's/[[]//' 9920380315,POSTPAID,0009,646.26,SELF,APPLICATION]
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This would help you,

$ echo '[9920380315,POSTPAID,0009,646.26,SELF,APPLICATION]'|sed 's/^\[//' 9920380315,POSTPAID,0009,646.26,SELF,APPLICATION]
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or directly with bash

code="[9920380315,POSTPAID,0009,646.26,SELF,APPLICATION]" echo "${code/[/}"
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  • Unlike OP's sedcommand, this will only remove the first occurrence of [, use // Commented Apr 29, 2019 at 12:18
  • yep but that was the request, remove the first [ of the string Commented Apr 29, 2019 at 12:21
  • sure, but it may be worth mentioning at least ;-) Commented Apr 29, 2019 at 12:22
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I got a single pass to work to remove both [ AND ] using a combined sed expression which I had not considered before with 2 expressions separated with a semicolon :

$ echo "ON bec.[BusinessID] = s.[BusinessID]" | sed 's/\[//g; s/\]//g' ON bec.BusinessID = s.BusinessID
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  • More efficiently done with tr -d '[]'. Also note that the request was for removing the first [ only. Commented Jan 27, 2022 at 21:23
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    This can be done more concisely (although less clearly) with sed 's/[][]//g', which was already given as an answer.  Also, FYI, you can do s/]// without escaping the ]. Commented Jan 27, 2022 at 23:49
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or

$ echo "[HTML],[FLASK]"|sed 's/[][]//g' HTML,FLASK
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1
  • This removes more than the first [. Commented Jun 26, 2019 at 22:30

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