sed

sed (short for stream editor) is a utility that transforms text via a script written in a relatively simple and compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. The functionality of sed is based on…

Key facts

First appeared: 1974
Category: programming_language
Problem solved: sed was created to automate repetitive text editing tasks that were previously performed interactively using the 'ed' line editor. It enabled non-interactive, stream-based text transformation on files or piped input, allowing for batch processing and scripting of editing operations.
Platforms: macOS, unix, Windows (via Cygwin/WSL), linux, POSIX-compliant systems, BSD, Linux, web

Related technologies

Shell scripting
Bash
Awk
Grep
Find
Pipelines (|)
Standard Unix utilities

Notable users

System Administrators
Software Developers (for build scripts, log analysis)
Any organization utilizing Unix-like operating systems for server management or data processing
DevOps Engineers