ssed

I was fed up with sed's obtuse regular expression syntax/support. Yeah, when JavaScript has a more sensible implementation, you know you have troubles.

15 minutes later I had ssed. I think the README took longer than the tool!

Installation

npm install -g ssed

Usage

> commands | ssed

All commands use a "g/re/p"-like syntax:

cmd/match[/replace]

All rules are run on every line, the output of one is fed into the next. If any step filters the line, the rest of the rules are skipped and the next line is processed.

Substitute

sub/pattern/replace
s/pattern/replace

Replaces the first match.

echo what a test | ssed sub/w/W
=> What a test
echo what a test | ssed 's/(\w+)/$1$1'
=> whatwhat a test

Global Substitute

gsub/pattern/replace
g/pattern/replace

Replaces all occurences of the pattern.

echo what a test | ssed gsub/t/T
=> whaT a TesT
echo what a test | ssed g/[a-su-z]/.
=> ...t . t..t

"Take"

take/pattern
t/pattern

Prints the matching regex (or the entire line if there is no match).

echo 'what a test' | ssed 'take/t\w+'
=> test
echo -e "what
> a
> great test" | ssed '+/t\w+t'
=> what
a
test

"Nth"

1/pattern
2/pattern
3/pattern
...

Prints the n-th group in the regex (or the entire line if there is no match).

echo 'what a test' | ssed '1/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+)'
=> what
echo 'what a test' | ssed '2/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+)'
=> a
echo 'what a test' | ssed '3/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+)'
=> test

"Remove"

remove/pattern
rm/pattern
r/pattern

Removes the matching part of the regex (or the entire line if there is no match).

echo 'what a test' | ssed 'rm/t\w+'
=> what a
echo -e "what
> a
> great test" | ssed 'rm/t\w+t'
=> what
a
great

On

on/pattern
o/pattern

Turns on printing starting at the matching line. Until then, no lines will be printed. This feature uses a simple global "printOn" boolean, so don't go nesting multiple on commands, they'll step all over each other.

echo -e "what
> a
> great test" | ssed 'on/^a'
=> a
great test

After

after/pattern
a/pattern

Just like on but doesn't print the matching line, it starts printing on the following line.

Off

off/pattern
f/pattern

Turns off printing, only useful following an on or after command.

echo -e "this
> is
> a
> really
> great
> test" | ssed 'on/^a' off/test
=> a
really
great

Print

print/pattern
p/pattern

Prints the line if the pattern matches, skips it otherwise. I'm pretty sure this is an actual sed command! But who knows, sed is a mess.

echo -e "you
> get
> it
> by
> now,
> right?" | ssed 'p/[a-m]'
=> get
it
by
right?

Kill

kill/pattern
k/pattern

Skips matching lines, inverse of print.

echo -e "you
get
it
by
now,
right?" | ssed 'p/[a-m]'
=> you
now,

Delimiters

Other delimiters are supported. Trailing delimiter is optional.

sub|match|replace
s/match/replace/

Bracket delimiters “work”, but they don't have to actually match, e.g. these are all equivalent:

g{match}replace
g}match{replace
g}match}replace
g{match{replace

As-is

I offer this up as-is. I'm happy to discuss PRs and bug fixes, but feature requests will be summarily closed. Who has time for lazy programmers in <?= date('Y') %>!?