Is there any sed like utility for cmd.exe? [closed

Question

I want to programmatically edit file content using windows command line (cmd.exe). In *nix there is sed for this tasks. Is there any usefull equivalent in windows?

Edit: I am looking for native command line solution.

Answer 1

edlin or edit

plus there is Windows Services for Unix which comes with many unix tools for windows. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/interopmigration/bb380242.aspx

Update 12/7/12 In Windows 2003 R2, Windows 7 & Server 2008, etc. the above is replaced by the Subsystem for UNIX-Based Applications (SUA) as an add-on. But you have to download the utilities: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=2391

Answer 2

This works on Vista Ultimate, not sure Pro.

sed -f commandfilename.cmd file1 > file2

Answer 3

> (Get-content file.txt) | Foreach-Object {$_ -replace "^SourceRegexp$", "DestinationString"} | Set-Content file.txt

This is behaviour of

sed -i 's/^SourceRegexp$/DestinationString/g' file.txt

Answer 4

sed (and its ilk) are contained within several packages of Unix commands.

• Cygwin works but is gigantic.
• UnxUtils is much slimmer.
• GnuWin32 is another port that works.
• Another alternative is AT&T Research's UWIN system.
• MSYS from MinGw is yet another option.
• Windows Subsystem for Linux is a most "native" option, but it's not installed on Windows by default; it has sed, grep etc. out of the box, though.
• https://github.com/mbuilov/sed-windows offers recent 4.3 and 4.4 versions, which support -z option unlike listed upper ports

If you don't want to install anything and your system ain't a Windows Server one, then you could use a scripting language (VBScript e.g.) for that. Below is a gross, off-the-cuff stab at it. Your command line would look like

cscript //NoLogo sed.vbs s/(oldpat)/(newpat)/ < inpfile.txt > outfile.txt

where oldpat and newpat are Microsoft vbscript regex patterns. Obviously I've only implemented the substitute command and assumed some things, but you could flesh it out to be smarter and understand more of the sed command-line.

Dim pat, patparts, rxp, inp
pat = WScript.Arguments(0)
patparts = Split(pat,"/")
Set rxp = new RegExp
rxp.Global = True
rxp.Multiline = False
rxp.Pattern = patparts(1)
Do While Not WScript.StdIn.AtEndOfStream
  inp = WScript.StdIn.ReadLine()
  WScript.Echo rxp.Replace(inp, patparts(2))
Loop

Answer 5

Today powershell saved me.

For grep there is:

get-content somefile.txt | where { $_ -match "expression"}

and for sed there is:

get-content somefile.txt | %{$_ -replace "expression","replace"}

For more detail see Zain Naboulsis blog entry.

Answer 6

There is a helper batch file for Windows called repl.bat which has much of the ability of SED but doesn't require any additional download or installation. It is a hybrid batch file that uses Jscript to implement the features and so is swift, and doesn't suffer from the usual poison characters of batch processing and handles blank lines with ease.

Download repl from - https://www.dropbox.com/s/qidqwztmetbvklt/repl.bat

The author is @dbenham from stack overflow and dostips.com

Another helper batch file called findrepl.bat gives the Windows user much of the capabilty of GREP and is also based on Jscript and is likewise a hybrid batch file. It shares the benefits of repl.bat

Download findrepl from - https://www.dropbox.com/s/rfdldmcb6vwi9xc/findrepl.bat

The author is @aacini from stack overflow and dostips.com