How to replace all but the first 3 characters with sed?


 
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Old 02-06-2015
Question How to replace all but the first 3 characters with sed?

This seems like it should be an easy problem, but for some reason I am struggling with the solution.
I simply want to replace all characters after the first 3 characters with another character, preferably with sed.
Thanks in advance.

Like this, but producing the proper number of *'s:
Code:
sed "s/\(.\{3\}\).*/\1*****/"

Input:
Code:
abababab
cdcdcdcdcd
efefefefe

Output:
Code:
aba*****
cdc*******
efe******

 
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replace(1)							  MySQL database							replace(1)

NAME
replace - A utility program that is used by msql2mysql, but that has more general applicability as well. replace changes strings in place in files or on the standard input. Uses a finite state machine to match longer strings first. Can be used to swap strings. USAGE
replace [-?svIV] from to from to ... -- [files] or replace [-?svIV] from to from to ... < fromfile > tofile SYNOPSIS
replace [-?|-I] [-s] [-v] DESCRIPTION
replace -?|-I info -s silent -v verbose EXTRA INFO
Special characters in from string: ^ Match start of line. $ Match end of line.  Match space-character, start of line or end of line. For a end  the next replace starts locking at the end space-character. A  alone in a string matches only a space-character. EXAMPLE
this command swaps a and b in the given files: shell> replace a b b a -- file1 file2 ... SEE ALSO
isamchk(1), isamlog(1), mysql(1), mysqlaccess(1), mysqladmin(1), mysqld(1), mysqld_multi(1), mysqld_safe(1), mysqldump(1), mysql_fix_privi- lege_tables(1), mysqlshow(1), mysql_zap(1), perror(1), For more information please refer to the MySQL reference manual, which may already be installed locally and which is also available online at http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/ BUGS
Please refer to http://bugs.mysql.com/ to report bugs. AUTHOR
Ver 1.0, distribution 4.0.24 Michael (Monty) Widenius (monty@mysql.com), MySQL AB (http://www.mysql.com/). This software comes with no warranty. Manual page by L. (Kill-9) Pedersen (kill-9@kill-9.dk), Mercurmedia Data Model Architect / system developer (http://www.mercur- media.com) ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +--------------------+------------------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +--------------------+------------------------------------+ |Availability | SUNWmysqlr, SUNWmysqlu, SUNWmysqlt | +--------------------+------------------------------------+ |Interface Stability | External | +--------------------+------------------------------------+ NOTES
Source for mysql is available on http://opensolaris.org. MySQL 4.0 19 December 2000 replace(1)