tr

tr [options] [string1 [string2]]

Copy standard input to standard output, performing substitution of characters from string1 to string2 or deletion of characters in string1. System V requires that string1 and string2 be enclosed in square brackets. BSD versions do not have this requirement.

Options

-c

Complement characters in string1 with characters in the current character set. The complement is the set of all characters not in string1.

-d

Delete characters in string1 from output.

-s

Squeeze out repeated output characters in string2.

Examples

Change uppercase to lowercase in a file:

tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]' < file

Solaris allows the use of character classes:

tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' < file

Turn spaces into newlines (ASCII code 012):

tr ' ' '\012' < file

Strip blank lines from file and save in new.file (or use \011 to change successive tabs into one tab):

tr -s "" "\012" < file > new.file

Delete colons from file; save result in new.file:

tr -d : < file > new.file

Make long search path more readable:

echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n'