sed is a stream editor. A stream editor is used to perform basic text transformations on an input stream (a file or input from a pipeline). While in some ways similar to an editor which permits scripted edits (such as ed), sed works by making only one pass over the input(s), and is consequently more efficient. But it is sed’s ability to filter text in a pipeline which particularly distinguishes it from other types of editors.

A replacement string, also known as the replacement text, is the text that each regular expression match is replaced with during a search-and-replace. In most applications, the replacement text supports special syntax that allows you to reuse the text matched by the regular expression or parts thereof in the replacement. This tutorial explains this syntax.

This quick start gets you up to speed quickly with regular expressions. Obviously, this brief introduction cannot explain everything there is to know about regular expressions. For detailed information, consult the regular expressions tutorial. Each topic in the quick start corresponds with a topic in the tutorial, so you can easily go back and forth between the two.

I have a bunch of html with lines like this:

<a href="#" rel="this is a test">

I need to replace the spaces in the rel-attribute with underscores, but I'm sort of a regex-noob!