TR(1) BSD Reference Manual TR(1)NAMEtr - translate characters
SYNOPSIStr [-cs] string1 string2
tr [-c] -d string1
tr [-c] -s string1
tr [-c] -ds string1 string2
DESCRIPTION
The tr utility copies the standard input to the standard output with sub-
stitution or deletion of selected characters.
The options are as follows:
-c Complements the set of characters in string1; for instance, "-c
ab" includes every character except for "a" and "b".
-d The -d option causes characters to be deleted from the input.
-s The -s option squeezes multiple occurrences of the characters
listed in the last operand (either string1 or string2) in the in-
put into a single instance of the character. This occurs after
all deletion and translation is completed.
In the first synopsis form, the characters in string1 are translated into
the characters in string2 where the first character in string1 is
translated into the first character in string2 and so on. If string1 is
longer than string2, the last character found in string2 is duplicated
until string1 is exhausted.
In the second synopsis form, the characters in string1 are deleted from
the input.
In the third synopsis form, the characters in string1 are compressed as
described for the -s option.
In the fourth synopsis form, the characters in string1 are deleted from
the input, and the characters in string2 are compressed as described for
the -s option.
The following conventions can be used in string1 and string2 to specify
sets of characters:
character Any character not described by one of the following conven-
tions represents itself.
\octal A backslash followed by 1, 2, or 3 octal digits represents a
character with that encoded value. To follow an octal sequence
with a digit as a character, left zero-pad the octal sequence
to the full 3 octal digits.
\character
A backslash followed by certain special characters maps to
special values.
\a <alert character>
\b <backspace>
\f <form-feed>
\n <newline>
\r <carriage return>
\t <tab>
\v <vertical tab>
A backslash followed by any other character maps to that char-
acter.
c-c Represents the range of characters between the range end-
points, inclusively.
[:class:] Represents all characters belonging to the defined character
class. Class names are:
alnum <alphanumeric characters>
alpha <alphabetic characters>
blank <blank characters>
cntrl <control characters>
digit <numeric characters>
graph <graphic characters>
lower <lower-case alphabetic characters>
print <printable characters>
punct <punctuation characters>
space <space characters>
upper <upper-case characters>
xdigit <hexadecimal characters>
Characters in the classes are in unspecified order. In this
implementation, they are usually in Unicode ascending order.
For specific information as to which ASCII or multibyte char-
acters are included in these classes, see wctype(3) and relat-
ed manual pages.
[=equiv=] Represents all characters or collating (sorting) elements be-
longing to the same equivalence class as equiv. If there is a
secondary ordering within the equivalence class, the charac-
ters are ordered in ascending sequence. Otherwise, they are
ordered after their encoded values. An example of an
equivalence class might be "c" and "ch" in Spanish; English
has no equivalence classes.
[#*n] Represents n repeated occurrences of the character represented
by #. This expression is only valid when it occurs in string2.
If n is omitted or is zero, it is be interpreted as large
enough to extend string2 sequence to the length of string1. If
n has a leading zero, it is interpreted as an octal value;
otherwise, it's interpreted as a decimal value.
The tr utility exits 0 on success or >0 if an error occurred.
EXAMPLES
The following examples are shown as given to the shell:
Create a list of the words in file1, one per line, where a word is taken
to be a maximal string of letters.
$ tr-cs [:alpha:]" "\n" < file1"
Translate the contents of file1 to upper-case.
$ tr [:lower:]" "[:upper:]" < file1"
Strip out non-printable characters from file1.
$ tr-cd [:print:]" < file1"
SEE ALSOsed(1)STANDARDS
System V has historically implemented character ranges using the syntax
"[c-c]" instead of the "c-c" used by historic BSD implementations and
standardised by POSIX. System V shell scripts should work under this im-
plementation as long as the range is intended to map in another range,
i.e., the command "tr [a-z] [A-Z]" will work as it will map the "[" char-
acter in string1 to the "[" character in string2. However, if the shell
script is deleting or squeezing characters as in the command "tr -d [a-
z]", the characters "[" and ""] will be included in the deletion or
compression list, which would not have happened under an historic System
V implementation. Additionally, any scripts that depended on the sequence
"a-z" to represent the three characters "a", "-", and "z" will have to be
rewritten as "a\-z".
The tr utility has historically not permitted the manipulation of NUL
bytes in its input and, additionally, has stripped NUL's from its input
stream. This implementation has removed this behavior as a bug.
The tr utility has historically been extremely forgiving of syntax er-
rors: for example, the -c and -s options were ignored unless two strings
were specified. This implementation will not permit illegal syntax.
The tr utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") compatible.
It should be noted that the feature wherein the last character of string2
is duplicated if string2 has less characters than string1 is permitted by
POSIX but is not required. Shell scripts attempting to be portable to
other POSIX systems should use the "[#*]" convention instead of relying
on this behavior.
MirOS BSD #10-current July 15, 2007 2
