sed illegal option -- - in build.sh on macOS

[tomkyle]

When running bin/build/build.sh, I get this “illegal option” message during the excution of the apply_pattern function:

sed: illegal option -- -
usage: […]
 [✖] Create '.htaccess'
...
 [✖] Create '.htaccess' fixture

As far as I can see this a sed issue on macos. Workaround: Replace system's sed with a more modern one, gnu-sed. The build.sh then succeeded:

$ brew install gnu-sed --with-default-names
...
🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/gnu-sed/4.4: 10 files ...
$ bin/build/build.sh
 [✔] Clean
 [✔] Create '.htaccess'
 [✔] Create '.htaccess' fixture

Question to sed magicians: Is there a way to avoid such additional installs?

My setup: OSX 10.11.6, homebrew bash4

[tomkyle]

Caution! The above workaround may break other scripts.
An example on my computer are Frend Weinhaus' imagemagick scripts which produced "doubled" output – each line shows twice – after replacing sed with the above homebrew method. This is because Fred Weinhaus uses sed a lot to produce formatted output (such as help text)

After unlinking the homebrew GNU sed (i.e. restoring the default macOS BSD sed) everything worked fine again. Linking again: Output doubled.

I am not sed expert enough to tell which command flags are responsible for that.

Anyway, I found another solution: tweaking the sed parameters order.

Here the original apply_pattern function:

apply_pattern() {
    sed -e "s/%FilesMatchPattern%/$( \
        cat "${repo_root}/src/files_match_pattern" | \
        sed '/^#/d' | \
        tr -s '[:space:]' '|' | \
        sed 's/|$//' \
    )/g" --in-place "$1"
}

I found if one replaces the --in-place option with shorter -i "", it seems to work fine:

apply_pattern () {
    sed -e "s/%FilesMatchPattern%/$( \
        cat "${repo_root}/src/files_match_pattern" | \
        sed '/^#/d' | \
        tr -s '[:space:]' '|' | \
        sed 's/|$//' \
    )/g" -i "" "$1"
}

Please, could someone with sed experience prove this? Thanks!

[LeoColomb]

Yup, your solution seems to be good enough! 🎉