sed: -e expression #1, char 1: unknown command: '|'

Question

When i put this code in terminal:

sed -i "|^if [[ -f /etc/skel/.bashrc ]]; then . /etc/skel/.bashrc; fi|d" ~/.bashrc

I obtain:

sed: -e expression #1, char 1: unknown command: '|'

Why?

Answer 1

You have to indicate that you are using a different separator in sed delete command by prepending a backslash \ before the new separator:

sed '\|text|d' file

See selecting lines by text matching in GNU Sed manual.