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35 .\" @(#)tr.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
36 .\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/tr/tr.1,v 1.5.2.7 2002/07/29 12:59:33 tjr Exp $
37 .\" $DragonFly: src/usr.bin/tr/tr.1,v 1.4 2008/05/02 02:05:07 swildner Exp $
44 .Nd translate characters
64 utility copies the standard input to the standard output with substitution
65 or deletion of selected characters.
67 The following options are available:
70 Complements the set of characters in
72 that is ``-c ab'' includes every character except for ``a'' and ``b''.
76 option causes characters to be deleted from the input.
80 option squeezes multiple occurrences of the characters listed in the last
85 in the input into a single instance of the character.
86 This occurs after all deletion and translation is completed.
90 option guarantees that any output is unbuffered.
93 In the first synopsis form, the characters in
95 are translated into the characters in
97 where the first character in
99 is translated into the first character in
106 the last character found in
112 In the second synopsis form, the characters in
114 are deleted from the input.
116 In the third synopsis form, the characters in
118 are compressed as described for the
122 In the fourth synopsis form, the characters in
124 are deleted from the input, and the characters in
126 are compressed as described for the
130 The following conventions can be used in
134 to specify sets of characters:
135 .Bl -tag -width [:equiv:]
137 Any character not described by one of the following conventions
140 A backslash followed by 1, 2 or 3 octal digits represents a character
141 with that encoded value.
142 To follow an octal sequence with a digit as a character, left zero-pad
143 the octal sequence to the full 3 octal digits.
145 A backslash followed by certain special characters maps to special
148 .It "\ea <alert character>"
149 .It "\eb <backspace>"
150 .It "\ef <form-feed>"
152 .It "\er <carriage return>"
154 .It "\ev <vertical tab>"
157 A backslash followed by any other character maps to that character.
159 Represents the range of characters between the range endpoints, inclusively.
161 Represents all characters belonging to the defined character class.
164 .It "alnum <alphanumeric characters>
165 .It "alpha <alphabetic characters>
166 .It "cntrl <control characters>
167 .It "digit <numeric characters>
168 .It "graph <graphic characters>
169 .It "lower <lower-case alphabetic characters>
170 .It "print <printable characters>
171 .It "punct <punctuation characters>
172 .It "space <space characters>
173 .It "upper <upper-case characters>
174 .It "xdigit <hexadecimal characters>
177 .\" All classes may be used in
185 .\" options are specified.
186 .\" Otherwise, only the classes ``upper'' and ``lower'' may be used in
188 .\" and then only when the corresponding class (``upper'' for ``lower''
189 .\" and vice-versa) is specified in the same relative position in
192 With the exception of the ``upper'' and ``lower'' classes, characters
193 in the classes are in unspecified order.
194 In the ``upper'' and ``lower'' classes, characters are entered in
197 For specific information as to which ASCII characters are included
198 in these classes, see
200 and related manual pages.
202 Represents all characters belonging to the same equivalence class as
204 ordered by their encoded values.
208 repeated occurrences of the character represented by
211 expression is only valid when it occurs in
215 is omitted or is zero, it is be interpreted as large enough to extend
217 sequence to the length of
221 has a leading zero, it is interpreted as an octal value, otherwise,
222 it's interpreted as a decimal value.
231 environment variables affect the execution of
238 The following examples are shown as given to the shell:
240 Create a list of the words in file1, one per line, where a word is taken to
241 be a maximal string of letters.
243 .D1 Li "tr -cs \*q[:alpha:]\*q \*q\en\*q < file1"
245 Translate the contents of file1 to upper-case.
247 .D1 Li "tr \*q[:lower:]\*q \*q[:upper:]\*q < file1"
249 Strip out non-printable characters from file1.
251 .D1 Li "tr -cd \*q[:print:]\*q < file1"
253 Remove diacritical marks from all accented variants of the letter
256 .Dl "tr \*q[=e=]\*q \*qe\*q"
258 System V has historically implemented character ranges using the syntax
259 ``[c-c]'' instead of the ``c-c'' used by historic
262 standardized by POSIX.
263 System V shell scripts should work under this implementation as long as
264 the range is intended to map in another range, i.e. the command
265 ``tr [a-z] [A-Z]'' will work as it will map the ``['' character in
267 to the ``['' character in
269 However, if the shell script is deleting or squeezing characters as in
270 the command ``tr -d [a-z]'', the characters ``['' and ``]'' will be
271 included in the deletion or compression list which would not have happened
272 under an historic System V implementation.
273 Additionally, any scripts that depended on the sequence ``a-z'' to
274 represent the three characters ``a'', ``-'' and ``z'' will have to be
275 rewritten as ``a\e-z''.
279 utility has historically not permitted the manipulation of NUL bytes in
280 its input and, additionally, stripped NUL's from its input stream.
281 This implementation has removed this behavior as a bug.
285 utility has historically been extremely forgiving of syntax errors,
290 options were ignored unless two strings were specified.
291 This implementation will not permit illegal syntax.
295 utility is expected to be
298 It should be noted that the feature wherein the last character of
302 has less characters than
304 is permitted by POSIX but is not required.
305 Shell scripts attempting to be portable to other POSIX systems should use
306 the ``[#*]'' convention instead of relying on this behavior.
309 option is an extension to the