[SOLVED] sed command to replace 7th tab with newline

tonyfreeman · 03-11-2011, 01:40 PM

I have a tab delimited file. I need to replace the 7th tab with a new line.

I tried the following command (but it does not work):

sed 's/\t{7}/\n/' block_01.txt

... the above simply spits out the original file.

If I write the next command, it replaces the first tab in each line with a newline. How can I make it replace the 7th tab in each line?

sed 's/\t/\n/' block_01.txt

-- Tony

corp769 · 03-11-2011, 01:49 PM

This site provides the best explanation of replacing occurrences of a character and such:
http://unix-school.blogspot.com/2011...-contents.html

Cheers,

Josh

Snark1994 · 03-11-2011, 01:52 PM

This should do it:

Code:

sed -r "s/([^\t]*(\t[^\t]*){6})\t/\1\n/" block_01.txt

Breakdown:

Code:

( [^\t]*                  (\t[^\t]*){6}                          )   \t
 a word with no tabs in  + (a tab and a word with no tabs in) * 6 + a tab
Replaced by
\1\n
Everything inside the first pair of brackets (in this case, everything up to the 7th tab) + a newline

EDIT: Ah, beaten to it

again... Darn you :P

Hope this helps,

colucix · 03-11-2011, 02:03 PM

Code:

sed 's/\t/\n/7' block_01.txt

tonyfreeman · 03-11-2011, 04:36 PM

Thanks people,

I used Snark1994's suggestion which worked; but, I really like colucix's code for it's elegance ... so I'm using that now in my code.

Thanks everyone for your help!

-- Tony