Learning Linux Shell Scripting - Second Edition

Printing – the p command

By default, the action of the sed command is to print the pattern space, such as every line that is copied into the buffer, and then print the result of processing it. Therefore, the sed output will consist of all lines along with the processed line by sed. If we do not want the default pattern space line to be printed, then we need to give the -n option. Therefore, we should use the -n option and the p command together to see the result of the sed processed output.

Here is an example:

    $ cat country.txt
  

The output is as follows:

    Country     Capital     ISD Code
    USA         Washington  1
    China       Beijing     86
    Japan       Tokyo       81
    India       Delhi       91
    
    $ sed '/USA/p' country.txt
  

The output is as follows:

    Country     Capital     ISD Code
    USA Washington 1 ...