discover · compare · collections · requirements · contribute · feed · watching · stats · help with your tokens

chmln/sd · source

Snapshot 0 · 2026-11-04T12:47:25Z · Rust · MIT

GitHub description at capture

Intuitive find & replace CLI (sed alternative)

README at capture

# sd - `s`earch & `d`isplace

`sd` is an intuitive find & replace CLI.

## The Pitch

Why use it over any existing tools?

*Painless regular expressions.*   `sd` uses regex syntax that you already know from JavaScript and Python. Forget about dealing with quirks of `sed` or `awk` - get productive immediately.

*String-literal mode.*   Non-regex find & replace. No more backslashes or remembering which characters are special and need to be escaped.

*Easy to read, easy to write.*   Find & replace expressions are split up, which makes them easy to read and write. No more messing with unclosed and escaped slashes.

*Smart, common-sense defaults.*   Defaults follow common sense and are tailored for typical daily use.

## Comparison to sed

While sed does a whole lot more, sd focuses on doing just one thing and doing it well. Here are some cherry-picked examples where sd shines.

Simpler syntax for replacing all occurrences:
  - sd: `sd before after`
  - sed: `sed s/before/after/g`

Replace newlines with commas:
  - sd: `sd -A '\n' ','`
  - sed: `sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/,/g'`

  Note: this requires `-A` (across mode) since `\n` is a cross-line pattern.

Extracting stuff out of strings containing slashes:
  - sd: `echo "sample with /path/" | sd '.*(/.*/)' '$1'`
  - sed: `echo "sample with /path/" | sed -E 's/.*(\\/.*\\/)/\1/g'`
    
    With sed, you can make it better with a different delimiter,
    but it is still messy:
    
    `echo "sample with /path/" | sed -E 's|.*(/.*/)|\1|g'`

In place modification of files:
  - sd: `sd before after file.txt`
  - sed: `sed -i -e 's/before/after/g' file.txt`
    
    With sed, you need to remember to use `-e` or else some
    platforms will consider the next argument to be a backup suffix.

## Benchmarks

**Simple replacement on ~1.5 gigabytes of JSON**

```sh
hyperfine --warmup 3 --export-markdown out.md \
  'sed -E "s/\"/'"'"'/g" *.json > /dev/null' \
  'sed    "s/\"/'"'"'/g" *.json > /dev/null' \
  'sd     "\"" "'"'"'"   *.json > /dev/null'
```

| Command | Mean [s] | Min…Max [s] |
|:---|---:|---:|
| `sed -E "s/\"/'/g" *.json > /dev/null` | 2.338 ± 0.008 | 2.332…2.358 |
| `sed    "s/\"/'/g" *.json > /dev/null` | 2.365 ± 0.009 | 2.351…2.378 |
| `sd     "\"" "'"   *.json > /dev/null` | **0.997 ± 0.006** | 0.987…1.007 |

Result: ~2.35 times faster

**Regex replacement on a ~55M json file**:

```sh
hyperfine --warmup 3 --export-markdown out.md \
  'sed -E "s:(\w+):\1\1:g"    dump.json > /dev/null' \
  'sed    "s:\(\w\+\):\1\1:g" dump.json > /dev/null' \
  'sd     "(\w+)" "$1$1"      dump.json > /dev/null'
```

| Command | Mean [s] | Min…Max [s] |
|:---|---:|---:|
| `sed -E "s:(\w+):\1\1:g"    dump.json > /dev/null` | 11.315 ± 0.215 | 11.102…11.725 |
| `sed    "s:\(\w\+\):\1\1:g" dump.json > /dev/null` | 11.239 ± 0.208 | 11.057…11.762 |
| `sd     "(\w+)" "$1$1"      dump.json > /dev/null` | **0.942 ± 0.004** | 0.936…0.951 |

Result: ~11.93 times faster

**Line-by-line vs across mode** (1M lines, ~36MB file):

| Command | Mean [ms] | Relative |
|:---|---:|---:|
| `sd -A 'foo' 'qux'` (across) | 125.6 ± 14.3 | 1.00 |
| `sed s/foo/qux/g` | 316.4 ± 30.0 | 2.52 |
| `sd 'foo' 'qux'` (line-by-line, default) | 357.0 ± 15.0 | 2.84 |

| Command | Mean [ms] | Relative |
|:---|---:|---:|
| `sd -A '(\w+) world' '$1 earth'` (across) | 254.0 ± 11.2 | 1.00 |
| `sd '(\w+) world' '$1 earth'` (line-by-line, default) | 566.7 ± 16.7 | 2.23 |
| `sed -E 's/(\w+) world/\1 earth/g'` | 4432.7 ± 173.2 | 17.45 |

Line-by-line mode is ~2-3x slower than across mode but still faster than sed for regex replacements. The tradeoff is dramatically lower memory usage:

| Mode | Peak RSS |
|:---|---:|
| `sd -A` (across) | 74 MB |
| `sd` (line-by-line, default) | 3 MB |

## Installation

Install through
[`cargo`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/getting-started/installation.html) with
`cargo install sd`, or through various package managers

[![Packaging status](https://repology.org/badge/vertical-allrepos/sd-find-replace.svg?exclude_unsupported=1)](https://repology.org/project/sd-find-replace/versions)

## Quick Guide

1. **String-literal mode**. By default, expressions are treated as regex. Use `-F` or `--fixed-strings` to disable regex.

   ```sh
   > echo 'lots((([]))) of special chars' | sd -F '((([])))' ''
   lots of special chars
   ```

2. **Basic regex use** - let's trim some trailing whitespace

   ```sh
   > echo 'lorem ipsum 23   ' | sd '\s+$' ''
   lorem ipsum 23
   ```

3. **Capture groups**

   Indexed capture groups:

   ```sh
   > echo 'cargo +nightly watch' | sd '(\w+)\s+\+(\w+)\s+(\w+)' 'cmd: $1, channel: $2, subcmd: $3'
   cmd: cargo, channel: nightly, subcmd: watch
   ```

   Named capture groups:

   ```sh
   > echo "123.45" | sd '(?P<dollars>\d+)\.(?P<cents>\d+)' '$dollars dollars and $cents cents'
   123 dollars and 45 cents
   ```

   In the unlikely case you stumble upon ambiguities, resolve them by using `${var}` instead of `$var`. Here's an example:

   ```sh
   > echo '123.45' | sd '(?P<dollars>\d+)\.(?P<cents>\d+)' '$dollars_dollars and $cents_cents'
    and

   > echo '123.45' | sd '(?P<dollars>\d+)\.(?P<cents>\d+)' '${dollars}_dollars and ${cents}_cents'
   123_dollars and 45_cents
   ```

4. **Find & replace in a file**

   ```sh
   > sd 'window.fetch' 'fetch' http.js
   ```

   That's it. The file is modified in-place.

   To preview changes:

   ```sh
   > sd -p 'window.fetch' 'fetch' http.js
   ```

5. **Find & replace across project**

   This example uses [fd](https://github.com/sharkdp/fd).

   Good ol' unix philosophy to the rescue.

   ```sh
   fd --type file --exec sd 'from "react"' 'from "preact"'
   ```

   Same, but with backups (consider version control).

   ```bash
   fd --type file --exec cp {} {}.bk \; --exec sd 'from "react"' 'from "preact"'
   ```

### Edge cases
sd will interpret every argument starting with `-` as a (potentially unknown) flag.
The common convention of using `--` to signal the end of flags is respected:

```bash
$ echo "./hello foo" | sd "foo" "-w"
error: Found argument '-w' which wasn't expected, or isn't valid in this context

USAGE:
    sd [OPTIONS] <find> <replace-with> [files]...

For more information try --help
$ echo "./hello foo" | sd "foo" -- "-w"
./hello -w
$ echo "./hello --foo" | sd -- "--foo" "-w"
./hello -w
```

### Processing modes

By default, sd processes input **line by line**. This means:
- Low memory usage (only one line in memory at a time)
- Streaming output for stdin (results appear before EOF)
- `^` and `$` match the start/end of each line without phantom matches
- `\s+$` trims trailing whitespace without eating newlines

If you need patterns to match **across line boundaries** (e.g. replacing `\n` or matching multi-line patterns), use the `-A` / `--across` flag:

```sh
> echo -e "hello\nworld" | sd -A '\n' ','
hello,world
```

### Escaping special characters
To escape the `$` character, use `$$`:

```bash
❯ echo "foo" | sd 'foo' '$$bar'
$bar
```