[SOLVED] sed: adding a new line between strings

Issue

I am using the combination of the ls + sed to make a list of the images in the folder and create output file of scpeficic format where each line separated by the empty line etc

ls ${blocks}/*png | sed 's/^/![caption](/;s/$/)\n/' > ${blocks}/out

The problem is that, inspite of the \n in the end sed does not add a "new line" after each string.

also would it be better to use find instead of ls for big number of png images?

Solution

Parsing output of ls can be error prone and must be avoided. Moreover bsd sed doesn't interpret \n as newline like you're using and emits a literal n in the substitution.

However, you don't even need ls | sed here, just use this for loop:

for f in "$blocks"/*.png; do
   printf '![caption](%s)\n\n' "$f"
done > "$blocks"/out

Or better just printf:

printf '![caption](%s)\n\n' "$blocks"/*.png

Answered By - anubhava

Answer Checked By - Terry (WPSolving Volunteer)