Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

tr

Synopsis

tr [options] [string1 [string2]]

Translates characters; copies standard input to standard output, substituting characters from string1 to string2, or deleting characters in string1.

Options

-c

Complement characters in string1 with respect to ASCII 001- 377.

-d

Delete characters in string1 from output.

-s

Squeeze out repeated output characters in string2.

-u

Guarantee that any output is unbuffered.

Special characters

Include brackets ([]) where shown.

\a

^G (bell)

\b

^H (backspace)

\f

^L (form feed)

\n

^J (newline)

\r

^M (carriage return)

\t

^I (tab)

\v

^K (vertical tab)

\ nnn

Character with octal value nnn.

\\

Literal backslash.

char1 - char2

All characters in the range char1 through char2. If char1 doesn’t sort before char2, produce an error.

[ char1 - char2 ]

Same as char1-char2 if both strings use this.

[ char *]

In string2, expand char to the length of string1.

[ char * number ]

Expand char to number occurrences. [x*4] expands to xxxx, for instance.

[:class :]

Expand to all characters in class, where class can be:

alnum

Letters and digits

alpha

Letters

blank

Whitespace

cntrl

Control characters

digit

Digits

graph

Printable characters except space

lower

Lowercase letters

print

Printable characters

punct

Punctuation

space

Whitespace (horizontal or vertical)

upper

Uppercase letters

xdigit

Hexadecimal digits

[= char =]

The class of characters in which char belongs.

Examples

Change uppercase to lowercase in a file:

$ cat 
                     file 
                     | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'

Turn spaces into newlines ...