Bug#832088: sed: silently fails with -n option specified first

[Assaf Gordon]

Hello,

Paolo Bonzini wrote:

On 22/07/2016 09:02, Daniel Iancu wrote:

sed -ni 's/foo/bar/' test # fails


So this is not a bug.


I've expanded sed's manual to mention this specific issue:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/sed.git/commit/?id=a36e8abccc5db38e4d2f8ea2bbb3e78dfddacd78

regards,
- assaf

Bug#832088: sed: silently fails with -n option specified first

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 22/07/2016 09:02, Daniel Iancu wrote:
> Package: sed
> Version: 4.2.2-4+b1
> Severity: normal
> 
> Sed silently fails when -n option is specified first and leaves
> the file blank. Thus resulting in the loss of the file contents.
> Example:
> # cd /tmp
> echo 'foo' > test
> sed -ni 's/foo/bar/' test # fails
> 
> echo 'foo' > test
> sed -in 's/foo/bar/' test # works

"-n" says "do not print anything by default", so sed is working as
expected---not printing anything since you don't have a "w" command.

"-in" says "do in-place editing and leave a backup in a file whose name
is the input file name followed by 'n'".  In this case sed adds a
default print action at the end of the loop.

So this is not a bug.

Paolo

Bug#832088: sed: silently fails with -n option specified first

[Daniel Iancu]

Package: sed
Version: 4.2.2-4+b1
Severity: normal

Sed silently fails when -n option is specified first and leaves
the file blank. Thus resulting in the loss of the file contents.
Example:
# cd /tmp
echo 'foo' > test
sed -ni 's/foo/bar/' test # fails

echo 'foo' > test
sed -in 's/foo/bar/' test # works