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

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

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.

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

Bob September 1, 2015 at 11:28 PM

Thanks! That worked for FreeBSD 10.2.

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nicolas pinson June 7, 2018 at 4:08 PM

Cheers, appreciated!

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pratik patel July 18, 2018 at 11:27 AM

Great..!
Thanks

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Mark Leavenworth September 28, 2018 at 2:20 PM

Thank you!

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Omar Gameel November 22, 2018 at 6:47 PM

Great tip!
Thanks

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Christoph Ruepprich June 19, 2019 at 1:51 PM

Thanks!

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Asle October 8, 2019 at 6:30 AM

Thanks! Got the same issue with error “sed: 1: “hello.txt”: extra characters at the end of h command” so adding the empty ” solved that.
sed -i ” ‘s/FOO/BaR/g’ hello.txt

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