Using different delimiters in sed (2010)

The common alternate character, for those cases where normal slashes are not suitable, is a comma character; ‘,’. With Sed code, readability is always an issue, and it can be improved by not using just any character and limiting yourself to as few alternative modes of syntax as possible.<p>With a bit of exposure, commands like<p>s&#x2F;foo&#x2F;bar&#x2F;<p>and<p>s,foo,bar,<p>can be read with equal ease.

On a related note, I found Bruce Barnett&#x27;s sed tutorial is one of the best Sed guide out there: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.grymoire.com&#x2F;Unix&#x2F;Sed.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.grymoire.com&#x2F;Unix&#x2F;Sed.html</a>

For one offs, I like to change up my delimiter so that I a) remind myslef I can and b)think the slashes are ugly dont like escaping. I prefer pipes.

I’ve seen so many hilariously bad workarounds for this in old shell scripts from lazy engineers who apparently can’t read a man page and don’t realise the delimiter character is substitutable with more or less any character you like.<p>This is one of this extremely useful features that a surprisingly large number of users don’t seem to know about.

Well, I have some bash scripts to improve... great post, another useful fact on HN.

tilda has always been my go-to; in fact i tend to use it in preference to &#x2F; even if there is no literal &#x2F; in my statement.<p>s~foo~bar~<p>I still use &#x2F; when pointing out typos in PRs, tho :)<p>s&#x2F;calulate&#x2F;calculate&#x2F;

The address one is really useful I wish I knew it this very week. Thanks!