Insert after every nth character using sed

DoDo1975 · 01-17-2007, 04:15 PM

Hi,

I am trying to figure out how to use sed to insert something after n characters.

I have a cgi script that outputs its progress to the browser using periods. I want to put a </br> tag every 100 or so periods to stop browsers from improperly displaying my table.

So how do I use sed to insert something after every 100th period?

Thanks,

homey · 01-17-2007, 06:41 PM

Maybe something like this

Code:

sed 's/\./&\<\/br\>/100' file.txt

matthewg42 · 01-17-2007, 06:59 PM

sed is operating on each line of input, so if you want to use this in a pipeline, waiting until n characters have been written where there are not newlines between the characters, sed is not suitable.