sed command is not working on windows 10

Question

I tried to run the below command in my windows 10 machine. Here, new text file contains some text like this 'how are you?'. I want to replace the string 'how'->'where' in that same file without creating a new file. But It shows error. Any comments to resolve it?

sed -i s/how/where/ new.txt

sed: invalid option -- i

I think that version doesn't have inplace editing option.. you can try a workaround: `sed 's/how/where/' new.txt > tmp.txt && mv tmp.txt new.txt` or use `perl` if it is available — Sundeep, Sep 15 '16 at 12:01
http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ this was having latest version 3.02 only — VijayVishnu, Sep 15 '16 at 13:00
no idea, this might help: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/111673/aixs-sed-in-place-editing and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7232797/sed-on-aix-does-not-recognize-i-flag — Sundeep, Sep 15 '16 at 13:07
I downloaded UnxUpdates.zip from unxutils.sourceforge.net and it contained `GNU sed version 4.0.7`, which supports the `-i` option. Can you make sure you have the latest version installed? — Tim, Sep 16 '16 at 00:08

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 16 '16 at 00:15

Your version of sed (GNU sed version 3.02), does not support the -i option. You can either update to a more recent version of sed (version 4.2.1 is available here), or work around the issue by redirecting to a temporary file and then copying it to the source file:

C:\>cat.exe foo.txt
foo
how
bar
baz
foo how bar

C:\>sed.exe s/how/where/ foo.txt > foo2.txt

C:\>move /Y foo2.txt foo.txt
        1 file(s) moved.

C:\>cat.exe foo.txt
foo
where
bar
baz
foo where bar

sed command is not working on windows 10

1 Answers1