Insert linefeed in sed (Mac OS X)

Question

How do I insert a newline in the replacement part of sed?

This code isn\'t working:

sed \"s/\\(1234\\)/\\n\\1/g\" input.txt > output.txt
         


        

Answer 1

Unfortunately, for me, sed seems to ignore \ns in the replacement string.

$ echo test1234foo123bar1234 | sed "s/\(1234\)/\n\1/g"
testn1234foo123barn1234

If that happens for you as well, an alternative is to use:

$ echo test1234foo123bar1234 | sed "s/\(1234\)/\\`echo -e '\n\r'`\1/g"

This should work anywhere and will produce:

test
1234foo123bar
1234

For your example with an input.txt file as input and output.txt as output, use:

$ sed "s/\(1234\)/\\`echo -e '\n\r'`\1/g" input.txt > output.txt