GNU bug report logs - #54614
GNU Sed 's/.../\n/' disagreement with POSIX

Previous Next

Full log

View this message in rfc822 format

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: 54614 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#54614: GNU Sed 's/.../\n/' disagreement with POSIX
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2022 10:20:41 -0700

POSIX says that this shell command:

 echo 'abc' | sed 's/b/\n/g'

should output 'anc', but with GNU Sed it outputs two lines 'a' and 'c', 
even if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.

Traditional Sed (e.g., Solaris, AIX 7) conforms to POSIX. FreeBSD Sed 
agrees with GNU Sed though, and I would guess that that GNU Sed's 
behavior is probably more expected. However, this disagreement with 
POSIX should be documented in the GNU Sed manual (and the manual should 
recommend backslash-newline over backslash-'n' for portability), and if 
POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, GNU Sed should conform to POSIX.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.