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sedsed

by Aurelio Jargas

DESCRIPTION

sedsed can debug, indent, tokenize and HTMLize your sed scripts.

In debug mode it reads your script and add extra commands to it. When executed you can see the data flow between the commands, revealing all the magic sed does on its internal buffers.

In indent mode your script is reformatted with standard spacing.

In tokenize mode you can see the elements of every command you use.

In HTMLize mode your script is converted to a beautiful colored HTML file, with all the commands and parameters identified for your viewing pleasure.

With sedsed you can master ANY sed script. No more secrets, no more hidden buffers.

DOWNLOAD

Sedsed is available as a pip package, just install it:

pip install --user sedsed

• Language: Python (compatible with versions 2.7 and 3.x)
• License: GPLv3
• Changelog
• GitHub repository

Found a bug? Please submit an issue.

Alternative: sedsed is a single file application, so you can also just download and run sedsed.py. Note that you'll also need to download its only external requirement, sedparse.py.

USAGE

prompt$ sedsed --help

usage: sedsed OPTION [-e sedscript] [-f sedscriptfile] [inputfile]

OPTIONS:

 -f, --file add file contents to the commands to be parsed
 -e, --expression add the script to the commands to be parsed
 -n, --quiet suppress automatic printing of pattern space
 --silent alias to --quiet

 -d, --debug debug the sed script
 --hide hide some debug info (options: PATT,HOLD,COMM)
 --color shows debug output in colors (default: ON)
 --nocolor no colors on debug output
 --dump-debug dumps to screen the debugged sed script

 -i, --indent script beautifier, prints indented and
 one-command-per-line output do STDOUT
 --prefix indent prefix string (default: 4 spaces)

 -t, --tokenize script tokenizer, prints extensive
 command by command information
 -H, --htmlize converts sed script to a colorful HTML page

SCREENSHOTS

Quick sample

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• The -d option turns debug ON.
• The --hide=hold options hides the HOLD SPACE buffer contents, because it is always empty on this example.
• The PATT: lines on sedsed's output shows the PATTERN SPACE buffer contents.
• The COMM: yellow lines show the command which is being executed.
• The user and otheruser lines are the sed's normal output.
• The $ sign at the end of PATT: lines represent the end of the buffer.

Indent

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• The -f option reads the sed script from a file (just like in sed).
• The --indent option reformats complicated sed scripts into beautiful human-friendly scripts.

Debug

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• The -d option turns debug ON.
• The HOLD: lines shows the HOLD SPACE buffer contents.
• See how the PATTERN and HOLD SPACE buffers change between the sed commands.
• See the buffers swap with the x command.
• See the \n that is inserted in PATTERN SPACE between the two lines joined by the G command.
• See sed under the curtains!

HTMLize

Besides indent and debug, sedsed also has the ability to convert your sed scripts to nice HTML pages, with the syntax highlighted just as in Vim Editor, with nice colors!

prompt$ cat email-linker.sed
h;s|.*|<link>&</link>|;x;/@/{s/@.*/'s email:/;G;}

prompt$ sedsed --htmlize -f email-linker.sed > email-linker.sed.html

Here is the resulting HTML file:

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Visit the sed Website for examples of more than 60 sed scripts HTMLized.

REFERENCE

sedsed Output
PATT:	Contents of the PATTERN SPACE buffer
HOLD:	Contents of the HOLD SPACE buffer
COMM:	The sed command being executed
$	Terminates the PATT and HOLD contents
...	Lines that don't begin with any identifiers are STDOUT
Action Options
--debug	DEBUG the sed script
--indent	Script beautifier, show indented source
--tokenize	Script tokenizer, show info about each command
--htmlize	Converts sed script to a colorful HTML page
Tips
less -r is your friend to page the colorful output of -d
Use the --hide option to a cleaner debug output
--htmlize send results to STDOUT, so redirect it

QA

sedsed was tested successfully against all the 5 stars (*****) extreme sed scripts from the Bonzini's excellent grab-bag site. So all the sed commands and structures wrote on these scripts, which are EXTREME, are correctly parsed.

If you want to try at home, download and execute them this way:

echo -e "one\ntwo\nthree\nfour" | sedsed -d -f sodelnum.sed

echo -e "one\ntwo\nthree\nfour" | sedsed -d -f sort.sed

echo a{b{c{bla}}} | sedsed -d -f tex2xml.sed

echo "aa='abc" | sedsed -d -f config.sed

(date +'%w %d' ; date +'%-m %Y') | sedsed -d -f cal.sed

echo 4 4 + p | sedsed -d -f dc.sed

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YES! Now you can (try to) understand what happens inside the unbelievable dc.sed calculator. Check this great shot of a simple "4+4" becoming "8" :)

SEE ALSO

• sedparse is a Python module to parse sed scripts.
• When debugging a sed script, sedsed shows the buffers contents between all commands, having no support for user-defined spypoints. If you want this feature, you should try sd, the spypoint-aware sed debugger written in shell script by Brian Hiles.
• Want to write portable scripts that will work on a wide range of sed flavors out there? Use the Laurent Voguel's sedcheck tool (it is a sed script!)
• Want to learn more about sed? Visit the sed Website, that has lots of documents and sample scripts.
• You will find more useful software at Aurelio's website.

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