The sed command is a bit like chess: it takes an hour to learn the basics and a lifetime to master them (or, at least a lot of practice). We'll show you a selection of opening gambits in each of the main categories of sed functionality.

sed is a stream editor that works on piped input or files of text. It doesn't have an interactive text editor interface, however. Rather, you provide instructions for it to follow as it works through the text. This all works in Bash and other command-line shells.