How to remove forward slashes from file in unix shell using sed?

Question

I have the following file :

/
/FUSE
//
Bank S.A / N.V
/F

I want to remove all forward slashes (/), so that the result looks like this:


FUSE
Bank S.A  N.V
F

How to do so using sed? Ive tried using tr, but tr is not what I need, because I want to edit the file in-place without printing it to console.

You appear to have deleted the last line in the example output. Is that a requirement of any solution here too? — Kusalananda, May 10 '22 at 15:21

score 4 · Answer 1 · edited May 10 '22 at 15:19

4

You can use tr for this:

$ tr -d '/' < file
FUSE
Bank S.A  N.V
F

To save the output, just redirect to a new file:

tr -d '/' < file > file.fixed

edited May 10 '22 at 15:19

Kusalananda

333,661

answered May 10 '22 at 11:56

terdon

242,166

1

An advantage of tr is that it works even for non-text files, while YMMV for sed (depending on the sed implementation). – Stéphane Chazelas May 10 '22 at 12:39
1

Note that / is not (thanfully!) special to the shell; it doesn't need to be quoted. – Stéphane Chazelas May 10 '22 at 12:39

thanasisp · Accepted Answer · 2022-05-10T12:53:39.543

3

Use a different separator than / into the sed expression, for example ::

sed 's:/::g' file

to remove all / irrespective of where they are on the line.

If you want to replace the existing file, use -i, meaning "inplace", which can be followed by an extension to backup the old file, for example this will keep a copy of the old file named file.old and modify file:

sed -i.old 's:/::g' file

edited May 10 '22 at 12:53

answered May 10 '22 at 11:51

thanasisp

8,122

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 10 '22 at 13:03

0

You can also use sed this way:

sed --in-place 's/\///g' file

You just ask sed to substitute (s) pattern / with void space.

answered May 10 '22 at 13:03

Brahim Gaabab

168

How to remove forward slashes from file in unix shell using sed?

3 Answers3