sed insert line command OSX

Question

I'm trying to insert text to the third line in a file using sed, and the syntax I've found on other forums is:

sed -i '' "3i\ text to insert" file

When I use this however, I get an error:

sed: 1: "3i\ text to insert": extra characters after \ at the end of i command

I can't seem to figure out what is causing the problem. I'm using OSX, which is why I have an empty ' ' as my extension.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You should put a newline directly after the \\ :

sed '3i\
text to insert' file

This is actually the behaviour defined by the POSIX specification . The fact that GNU sed allows you to specify the text to be inserted on the same line is an extension.

---

If for some reason you need to use double quotes around the sed command, then you must escape the backslash at the end of the first line:

sed "3i\\
text to insert" file

This is because a double-quoted string is processed first by the shell, and \\ followed by a newline is removed:

$ echo "abc\
def"
abcdef

Answer 2

On OSX you can use:

sed -i.bak '3i\
text to insert
' file

Answer 3

Here's how to do it in one line syntax

sed -i '' -e "2s/^//p; 2s/^.*/text to insert/" file

• duplicate second line: 2s/^//p;

• replace new line with your text: 2s/^.*/text to insert/

Answer 4

A one-liner for OSX employing ANSI-C quoting:

sed -i '' '3i\'$'\n''text to insert' file

Adapted from https://stackoverflow.com/a/24299845/901597

Answer 5

This works for me

sed -i '' '3i\
text to insert' file 

Answer 6

If you want to modify a file of specific file type(.sh in my case) use this command.

sed -i '.sh' '3i\
mymodified text to insert' temp.sh

Make sure you have line break after slash ("\\")

Answer 7

I've found that I have to insert a \\ at the end of the line to be inserted, otherwise it concatenates it at the beginning of the original line. So, if I want to insert a new third line,...

sed -i '' '3i\<br>
New line to be inserted.\<br>
' file

Answer 8

To insert text to the first line and put the rest on a new line using sed on macOS this worked for me

sed -i '' '1 i \
Insert
' ~/Downloads/File-path.txt