How to use sed to automate mind-numbing tasks (with examples)

In this tutorial, we’ll show, with examples that you can copy paste right into your shell, how you can use sed to automate mind-numbing tasks. Automating mind-numbing tasks is not only good for your emotional health, it’ll make you more accurate and productive

macOS (BSD) disclaimer

If you’re using a mac, the -i flag requires a file extension (like .bak) which creates backup files that then have to be removed. If you’re using linux, everything will work as is.

The Examples

Backup a list of files

Example usage

ls | sed "s/.*/cp & &.bak/" | bash

Reusable script

#!/usr/bin/env bash

sed "s/.*/cp & &.bak/"

Explanation

This example is interesting because it uses sed to generate bash code which is executed by bash.

Imagine the input is a single line containing the text "file.txt"

Then sed finds .* which means the entire input value "file.txt".

It then replaces it with "cp & &.bak".

& is a special value which means the entire found match, which is file.

So the answer is: "cp file.txt file.txt.bak"

If the in…