sed imbed a tab

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I'm using OpenBSD 4.3 & ksh (pdksh) default shell.
I'm trying to use sed to insert a tab into a text file with no luck.

$ sed 's/SusanAppleton/Susan\o011Appleton/' myFile.txt
Susano011Appleton
$ sed 's/SusanAppleton/Susan\tAppleton/' myFile.txt
SusantAppleton

I'm close to suicide here. Please help :frowning:

2

Have you tried just using the tab key to enter the character in your sed script?

3

I tried that. However, when I hit the tab key, the PC speaker just beeps and the cursor stays where it was.

4

How weird.... is that when you're in vi? Or on the command-line? Or everywhere?

How about using perl instead:

perl -pe 's/SusanAppleton/Susan\tAppleton/' myFile.txt > myFile_modified.txt
5

The tab key will beep the PC speaker when I try to use it in a command (however, tab completion works, oddly enough). When I'm using ed or vi, the tab key functions as expected (it inserts 0x09). I could definitely use perl, but I'd like to know why OpenBSD sed isn't working for me here. It's driving me crazy. GNU sed will allow \t \n etc...

6

Oh, try Ctrl-V followed by the tab key.

7

You could try typing...

ctrl-v ctrl-i

..for the tab character. I find this works.

8

Got once this from PHV (tek-tips):

VAR="\t"
echo "SusanAppleton"| sed 's/A/'${VAR}A'/g'
Susan   Appleton
9

Wow! That worked! What does Ctrl-V mean/do????
And thank you, everyone! :b:

10

Ctrl-V means to interpret the next character entered literally, i.e. not attempt to perform any special functions such as tab-completion.