Regular expression question.
 

Hi,

I would like to have a *unknown* number of '+' signs with one space.

So "+" should be " "
also "+++" should be " "
and "++++++" should be " ".

I came up with the following:

$ echo "1 + 2 ++ 3 +++++" | sed -e 's/\++/ /g'

But this replaces all double plus signs ("++") with a space.
So "+" is not replaced and "++++" is replaced with to spaces (" ")

I have tried groups and brackets and everything I could come up with.

Has somebody else any idea or solution?

Thanx,

Gijs

Your reg is fine, just enable it with the -r switch

$ echo "1 + 2 ++ 3 +++++" | sed -r 's/\++/ /g'

Yeah, the use of '+' (meaning one or more) in an regex is considered an extended notation. To do the same thing without needing extended notation, try:

This will match a single '+', followed by zero or more additional '+', and replace them with a space.