Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Examples

Command	Action performed
s/xx/yy/g	Substitute on all lines (all occurrences).
/BSD/d	Delete lines containing BSD.
/^BEGIN/,/^END/p	Print between BEGIN and END, inclusive.
/SAVE/!d	Delete any line that doesn’t contain SAVE.
/BEGIN/,/END/!s/xx/yy/g	Substitute on all lines, except between BEGIN and END.

Braces ({ }) are used in sed to nest one address inside another or to apply multiple commands at a single matched address.

    [/pattern/[,/pattern/]]{
    command1
                  command2
    }

The opening curly brace must end its line, and the closing curly brace must be on a line by itself. Be sure there are no spaces after the braces.