06-23-2011
In the pattern .*3 matches all characters up to the character 3. Because sed uses a greedy match, it matches all characters up to the last three.
Adding the parens \(.*\)3 'groups' the part of the input string that was matched by the enclosed pattern. In this case, all characters before the 3.
In the replacement string, the \1 is a 'back reference' to the first group, so what ever was matched by the first group is 'kept' in the output string. The remainder of the substitution string is then added.
Because the text following the last occurrence of the desired character is NOT matched, it is left alone in the replacement process and appears as it was in the input string.
I hope this makes sense.
Last edited by agama; 06-23-2011 at 11:51 PM..
Reason: typo
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LEARN ABOUT FREEBSD
paste
PASTE(1) BSD General Commands Manual PASTE(1)
NAME
paste -- merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files
SYNOPSIS
paste [-s] [-d list] file ...
DESCRIPTION
The paste utility concatenates the corresponding lines of the given input files, replacing all but the last file's newline characters with a
single tab character, and writes the resulting lines to standard output. If end-of-file is reached on an input file while other input files
still contain data, the file is treated as if it were an endless source of empty lines.
The options are as follows:
-d list Use one or more of the provided characters to replace the newline characters instead of the default tab. The characters in list
are used circularly, i.e., when list is exhausted the first character from list is reused. This continues until a line from the
last input file (in default operation) or the last line in each file (using the -s option) is displayed, at which time paste
begins selecting characters from the beginning of list again.
The following special characters can also be used in list:
newline character
tab character
\ backslash character
Empty string (not a null character).
Any other character preceded by a backslash is equivalent to the character itself.
-s Concatenate all of the lines of each separate input file in command line order. The newline character of every line except the
last line in each input file is replaced with the tab character, unless otherwise specified by the -d option.
If '-' is specified for one or more of the input files, the standard input is used; standard input is read one line at a time, circularly,
for each instance of '-'.
EXIT STATUS
The paste utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
EXAMPLES
List the files in the current directory in three columns:
ls | paste - - -
Combine pairs of lines from a file into single lines:
paste -s -d '
' myfile
Number the lines in a file, similar to nl(1):
sed = myfile | paste -s -d '
' - -
Create a colon-separated list of directories named bin, suitable for use in the PATH environment variable:
find / -name bin -type d | paste -s -d : -
SEE ALSO
cut(1), lam(1)
STANDARDS
The paste utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'') compatible.
HISTORY
A paste command appeared in Version 32V AT&T UNIX.
BSD
June 25, 2004 BSD