Scribbles for my bad memory

When using sed on Windows, you might run into unexpected behavior, especially with line endings. If you're editing files with Windows-style line endings (\r\n), sed can unintentionally modify them, causing issues with tools like git diff. Here’s how you can use sed effectively on Windows without breaking your line endings.

The Problem: Unexpected \r\n to \n Conversion

On Windows, text files usually use \r\n (carriage return + line feed) as line endings. However, sed, depending on its mode, may treat these as Unix-style \n line endings, removing the \r and leading to issues like:

• Files appearing changed when they shouldn’t.
• Tools like git diff showing extra changes due to the altered line endings.

Solution: Use sed -b to Prevent Line Ending Conversion

To avoid this, you need to force sed to operate in binary mode, which prevents automatic conversion of line endings.

Example:

sed -b 's/old_text/new_text/' filename.txt

In this example:

• The -b flag ensures sed works in binary mode, preserving the \r\n line endings.
• The s/old_text/new_text/ part performs the actual substitution.