On 04/09/2021, Parodper <parod...@gmail.com> wrote: > I think I found something. From POSIX > (https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/sed.html): > > A line can be split by substituting a <newline> into it. The > > application shall escape the <newline> in the replacement by preceding > > it by a <backslash>.
Are you or is anyone clear on what they mean by substituting? Because I'm not. I mean, \n is a substitute for the literal <newline> character, right? > So I wrote > :!sed s/abc/abc\/g % | grep -c abc > and then went back and pressed <ENTER> after that backslash, i.e. > :!sed s/abc/abc\<ENTER>/g % | grep -c abc > And it gave me a correct number of abc's for my test text. I feel like the dumbest person in the world asking this, but what EXACTLY do you mean by "and then went back"? Are you using cursor keys? I.e. should I have gotten those to work in vi in xterm and console? Because I haven't. The moment I try to cursor back, I'm back to vi mode and the ex-style command mode line at the bottom is gone. Otherwise, if I try to just type :!sed s/abc/abc\/g % | grep -c abc and press enter, I only get the same output I also get out of :!grep -c abc % on its own -- which won't count multiple same-line occurrences. A still confused Ian
