5.7. Error Messages and Exit Status

When sed encounters a syntax error, it sends a pretty straightforward error message to standard error, but if it cannot figure out what you did wrong, sed gets "garbled," which we could guess means confused. If the syntax is error-free, the exit status that sed returns to the shell is a zero for success and a nonzero integer for failure.^[2]

^[2] For a complete list of diagnostics, see the man page for sed.

Example 5.7.


1   % sed '1,3v ' file

    sed: Unrecognized command: 1,3v

    % echo $status            # use echo $? if using Korn or Bourne shell

    2



2   % sed '/^John' file

    sed: Illegal or missing delimiter: /^John



3   % sed 's/134345/g' file

    sed: Ending delimiter missing on substitution: s/134345/g

EXPLANATION

The v command is unrecognized by sed. The exit status was 2, indicating that sed exited with a syntax problem.
The pattern /^John is missing the closing forward slash.
The substitution command, s, contains the search string but not the replacement string.

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