sed: Not Portable

So you want to use something like sed -r -n 's/^.*([0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+).*$/\1/p' to extract the version of some program in your Makefile and put it into a variable? Well I hope you like walled gardens, because that, my friend, is NON-PORTABLE! Works fine on Linux and Cygwin, luring you in with its false sense of security, then BAM, it totally collapses on a *BSD or OSX system. And the worst part about it is, the problem is not what you think: the backref is totally fine.

It’s the -r. Meaning “use extended regular expressions instead of the ‘basic’ regexes that nobody would ever use because they make an already impossible-to-read expression even less possible to read, if that’s even possible”, at least to GNU sed. For reasons known only to… well, nobody…, the non-GNU sed on *BSDs and OSXes uses -E for this purpose instead. True story.

Yep, in the year 200-ought-16, 21st century, extended regular expressions are not portable:

Regular Expressions in sed

The sed utility shall support the BREs [Basic Regular Expressions] described in XBD Basic Regular Expressions,[…]

Well, at least not in sed anyway. Thanks Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7. If that is your real name.

sed Portability Solutions

“So what do we do Gary!?!?!??!?”, you ask? Well, you only have three options:

1. Learn to read and write Basic Regular Expressions

   This is what Open Group would have you do. Yep, me neither, I only list it for completeness.

2. Do autoconf’s job for it, and write an M4 macro to find an installed sed, then determine the correct command-line param… and I lost you at M4. No prob, this next one is what I do currently:

3. Cheat: Use sed -E

Fun fact: GNU sed accepts -E as a synonym for -r. It’s not in the --help, nor the man page, but it’s there and it works - on at least the Linuxes, Cygwins, PC-BSDs (FreeBSDs), and even OSXs I’ve tried. Number 3 for the win! You. Are. Welcome!

Editor’s Note: Of course, #2 is what you should do in a production context, but that doesn’t read as well.