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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 1.3 2006/02/17 20:39:12 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
149 .It "\ea <alert character>
153 .It "\er <carriage return>
155 .It "\ev <vertical tab>
158 A backslash followed by any other character maps to that character.
160 Represents the range of characters between the range endpoints, inclusively.
162 Represents all characters belonging to the defined character class.
166 .It "alnum <alphanumeric characters>
167 .It "alpha <alphabetic characters>
168 .It "cntrl <control characters>
169 .It "digit <numeric characters>
170 .It "graph <graphic characters>
171 .It "lower <lower-case alphabetic characters>
172 .It "print <printable characters>
173 .It "punct <punctuation characters>
174 .It "space <space characters>
175 .It "upper <upper-case characters>
176 .It "xdigit <hexadecimal characters>
179 .\" All classes may be used in
187 .\" options are specified.
188 .\" Otherwise, only the classes ``upper'' and ``lower'' may be used in
190 .\" and then only when the corresponding class (``upper'' for ``lower''
191 .\" and vice-versa) is specified in the same relative position in
194 With the exception of the ``upper'' and ``lower'' classes, characters
195 in the classes are in unspecified order.
196 In the ``upper'' and ``lower'' classes, characters are entered in
199 For specific information as to which ASCII characters are included
200 in these classes, see
202 and related manual pages.
204 Represents all characters belonging to the same equivalence class as
206 ordered by their encoded values.
210 repeated occurrences of the character represented by
213 expression is only valid when it occurs in
217 is omitted or is zero, it is be interpreted as large enough to extend
219 sequence to the length of
223 has a leading zero, it is interpreted as an octal value, otherwise,
224 it's interpreted as a decimal value.
233 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"
260 System V has historically implemented character ranges using the syntax
261 ``[c-c]'' instead of the ``c-c'' used by historic
264 standardized by POSIX.
265 System V shell scripts should work under this implementation as long as
266 the range is intended to map in another range, i.e. the command
267 ``tr [a-z] [A-Z]'' will work as it will map the ``['' character in
269 to the ``['' character in
271 However, if the shell script is deleting or squeezing characters as in
272 the command ``tr -d [a-z]'', the characters ``['' and ``]'' will be
273 included in the deletion or compression list which would not have happened
274 under an historic System V implementation.
275 Additionally, any scripts that depended on the sequence ``a-z'' to
276 represent the three characters ``a'', ``-'' and ``z'' will have to be
277 rewritten as ``a\e-z''.
281 utility has historically not permitted the manipulation of NUL bytes in
282 its input and, additionally, stripped NUL's from its input stream.
283 This implementation has removed this behavior as a bug.
287 utility has historically been extremely forgiving of syntax errors,
292 options were ignored unless two strings were specified.
293 This implementation will not permit illegal syntax.
297 utility is expected to be
300 It should be noted that the feature wherein the last character of
304 has less characters than
306 is permitted by POSIX but is not required.
307 Shell scripts attempting to be portable to other POSIX systems should use
308 the ``[#*]'' convention instead of relying on this behavior.
311 option is an extension to the