noun
sed
sehd
noun
1
A command-line program used on Unix-like systems to search, replace, and edit text automatically, line by line, without opening it in a full text editor.
"He ran a quick sed command to swap every "colour" for "color" in the file."
"The build script uses sed to strip comments out of the SQL dump before importing it."
verb
1
To process or modify a text file or stream using the sed program.
"Just sed the log file to remove the timestamps before you share it."
How to Use Sed
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishA tool (and, informally, a verb) for making quick find-and-replace edits to text files from the command line.
Memory tip
You will mostly meet this word in programming and sysadmin contexts, almost never in everyday writing.
Trace the full origin ↓
Common pairings
run sed on a file
a sed script
sed and awk
Word Forms
sedded past tense, seds plural, seds singular
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He ran a quick _____ command to swap every "colour" for "color" in the file.
Etymology
Short for "stream editor", the name given to the original Unix tool when it was created in the 1970s.