Issue
Imagine the following data stored in file data.txt
1, StringString, AnotherString 545
I want to replace "StringString" with "Strung" with the following code
sed -ir 's/String+/Strung/g' data.txt
But it won't work. This works though:
sed -ri 's/String+/Strung/g' data.txt
I don't see any reason why the order of option flags would matter. Is it a bug or is there an explanation?
Please note that I'm not looking for a workaround but rather why the order of -ir and -ri matters.
Sidenotes: The switch -i "edits the file in place" while -r allows "extended regular expression" (allowing the + operator). I'm running sed 4.2.1 Dec. 2010 on Ubuntu 12.10.
Solution
When doing -ir you are specifying that "r" should be the suffix for the backup file.
You should be able to do -i -r if you need them in that order
Answered By - Andreas Wederbrand Answer Checked By - Cary Denson (WPSolving Admin)