sd

sd is a find-and-replace command-line tool that aims to be a simpler, more ergonomic alternative to sed. It uses standard regex syntax (rather than POSIX regex), supports literal string replacement without escaping, and works consistently across platforms.

Features

• Intuitive syntax — sd find replace instead of sed 's/find/replace/g'
• Standard regex — uses Rust's regex crate, not arcane POSIX syntax
• Literal mode — replace fixed strings without worrying about escaping special characters
• In-place file editing — modify files directly without temp file gymnastics
• Multiline support — patterns can match across line boundaries
• Preview mode — pipe output to see changes before committing them

Installation

cargo install sd

Or via your system package manager:

# Debian / Ubuntu
apt install sd

# Fedora
dnf install sd

# macOS
brew install sd

# Arch Linux
pacman -S sd

Usage

# Basic find and replace in a string
echo 'hello world' | sd 'world' 'Rust'

# Replace in a file (in-place)
sd 'foo' 'bar' file.txt

# Replace across multiple files
sd 'foo' 'bar' src/*.rs

# Use regex capture groups
echo '2024-01-15' | sd '(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})' '$3/$2/$1'
# Output: 15/01/2024

# Literal string mode (no regex), useful for replacing strings with special characters
sd -F 'file.name' 'file_name' config.txt

# Preview changes without modifying the file
sd 'old_api' 'new_api' src/main.rs

Comparison with sed

# sed — replace all occurrences
sed -i 's/old/new/g' file.txt

# sd — same thing, far less noise
sd 'old' 'new' file.txt

# sed — backreference syntax
sed 's/\(foo\)\(bar\)/\2\1/'

# sd — backreference syntax (standard)
sd '(foo)(bar)' '$2$1'

sd shines in scripts and one-liners where sed's idiosyncratic syntax would otherwise slow you down or introduce subtle bugs.