Using BSD sed (no GNU extensions), how can I perform an operation similar to the example provided below, but where instead of the line number, the replacement is performed on the first line in which a pattern occurs (rather than having to specify an actual number)?
Restricting to a line number
The simplest restriction is a line number.
If you wanted to delete the first number on line 3, just add a "3" before the command:
sed '3 s/[0-9][0-9]*//' <filename >newfilename
{ sed -Ee'/[0-9]+/{s///;q;}'; cat; } <in >out
^should work w/ a BSD sed. but apparently it doesn't.
and so:
sed -e'/[0-9][0-9]*/{s///;:b' -e'n;bb' -e\} <in >out
...should work with any of them.
sed under stdbuf -i 1 to work around it (would read the input one byte at a time though)
Commented
Dec 20, 2015 at 23:33
q leaving the cursor in the right place)), the second one is even better than the solution given in the FAQ as the FAQ one uses N instead of n (which would slurp the rest of the file in the pattern space).
Commented
Dec 20, 2015 at 23:55
This works perfectly:
sed '1,/abc/s/abc/xyz/' file.txt
Can be abbreviated to:
sed '1,/abc/s//xyz/' file.txt
Compatible with GNU & BSD:
sed '1,/[0-9][0-9]*/s///' <filename >newfilename
s command on more than one line) if the first match is on the first line (as noted in the FAQ)
Commented
Dec 21, 2015 at 11:08