[Bug 260450] Documentation for 'sed' is misleading w.r.t. files that do not end in newlines
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Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2021 20:46:35 UTC
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=260450 Bug ID: 260450 Summary: Documentation for 'sed' is misleading w.r.t. files that do not end in newlines Product: Base System Version: Unspecified Hardware: Any OS: Any Status: New Severity: Affects Many People Priority: --- Component: bin Assignee: bugs@FreeBSD.org Reporter: jwdevel@gmail.com When a text file does not have a terminating newline, sed seems to behave contrary to its documentation. Example: $ echo -n asdf > file.txt $ wc -c file.txt 4 file.txt $ sed -n p foo.txt | wc -c 4 In other words, sed does *not* add a newline for the last line in this file. However, the sed(1) manpage says: Normally, sed cyclically copies a line of input, not including its terminating newline character, into a pattern space, (unless there is something left after a āDā function), applies all of the commands with addresses that select that pattern space, copies the pattern space to the standard output, appending a newline, and deletes the pattern space. In my reading of this, sed should _always_ output a newline, even if its input did not have one. But that does not seem to be the case. A little further info: $ sed -n l foo.txt asdf$ The 'l' command outputs the pattern space. In fact, this pattern space ("asdf$") is the same regardless of whether the input file has the terminating newline or not. Therefore, when the docs say "... copies the pattern space to the standard output, appending a newline," this seems clearly incorrect. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.