OS X + Sed: “extra characters at the end of l command” Error

5 Replies

PROBLEM

When executing the following command on OS X… 

sed -i 's/megatron/pony/g' /path/to/file.txt

… the following error occurs:-

sed: 1: "/path/to/file.txt": extra characters at the end of l command

SOLUTION

Unlike Ubuntu, OS X requires the extension to be explicitly specified. The workaround is to set an empty string:-

sed -i '' 's/megatron/pony/g' /path/to/file.txt

… and now, Megatron has transformed into a pony.

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