Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!ssdbruce
From: ssdbruce@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Bruce Crabtree)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Sed to make global replacements.
Message-ID: <3369@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Date: 2 Dec 89 03:10:19 GMT
References: <37090@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Reply-To: ssdbruce@jarthur.UUCP (Bruce Crabtree)
Organization: Software Systems Design, Claremont, CA
Lines: 22

In article <37090@ames.arc.nasa.gov> gahooten@orion.arc.nasa.gov (Gregory A. Hooten) writes:
>I would like to change the characters \(12 to 1/2, but every thing I try
>thinks the \( is the start of a character group.

Try
                sed 's/[\\](12/1\/2/g'

By bracketing the backslash characters you are preventing sed from seeing
the '\(' combination.  Two backslashes are used since the backslash has
special meaning to sed and must be escaped (with another backslash).  The
slash (or virgule, if you will) that is used to separate the '1/2' must
also be escaped to prevent sed from using it as the delimiter of the 
substitution command.  I added the 'g' or global option since I assume
you might have multiple occurrances of \(12 on a line.

Bruce Crabtree

-- 
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Bruce Crabtree			      ssdbruce@jarthur.claremont.edu
Software Systems Design, Inc          [W] 1-714-624-2306
Claremont, CA                         [H] 1-714-738-6026