File: sed.info,  Node: Addresses overview,  Next: Numeric Addresses,  Up: sed addresses

4.1 Addresses overview
======================

Addresses determine on which line(s) the ‘sed’ command will be executed.
The following command replaces any first occurrence of ‘hello’ with
‘world’ only on line 144:

     sed '144s/hello/world/' input.txt > output.txt

   If no address is specified, the command is performed on all lines.
The following command replaces ‘hello’ with ‘world’, targeting every
line of the input file.  However, note that it modifies only the first
instance of ‘hello’ on each line.  Use the ‘g’ modifier to affect every
instance on each affected line.

     sed 's/hello/world/' input.txt > output.txt

   Addresses can contain regular expressions to match lines based on
content instead of line numbers.  The following command replaces ‘hello’
with ‘world’ only on lines containing the string ‘apple’:

     sed '/apple/s/hello/world/' input.txt > output.txt

   An address range is specified with two addresses separated by a comma
(‘,’).  Addresses can be numeric, regular expressions, or a mix of both.
The following command replaces ‘hello’ with ‘world’ only on lines 4 to
17 (inclusive):

     sed '4,17s/hello/world/' input.txt > output.txt

   Appending the ‘!’ character to the end of an address specification
(before the command letter) negates the sense of the match.  That is, if
the ‘!’ character follows an address or an address range, then only
lines which do _not_ match the addresses will be selected.  The
following command replaces ‘hello’ with ‘world’ only on lines _not_
containing the string ‘apple’:

     sed '/apple/!s/hello/world/' input.txt > output.txt

   The following command replaces ‘hello’ with ‘world’ only on lines 1
to 3 and from line 18 to the last line of the input file (i.e.
excluding lines 4 to 17):

     sed '4,17!s/hello/world/' input.txt > output.txt