bug#20864: How to preserve newlines in sed text replacement command?

[Assaf Gordon]

tag 20864 notabug
stop

Hello,

Sorry for the delayed response.

> Are you interested to clarify escaping of new-line characters
> a bit more?
> http://sed.sourceforge.net/sedfaq4.html#s4.1

This sed FAQ page is not maintained by us (GNU sed developers),
and we can not change it.

> Which number of backslashes should be appropriate
> for the desired pattern substitution in a shell variable?

I think there is some delicate interplay between the shell
and sed in the examples you provided (for one, not all shells
support the $'\n' syntax).

It might be better to separate the steps and see which cause problems.

As for sed, A single backslash is what's needed to indicate
a newline character:

   $ echo xyz | sed 's/y/\n/' | od -c
   0000000   x  \n   z  \n

I'm marking this as 'done', but discussion can continue
by replying to this thread.

regards,
- assaf