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NAME
tr — translate characters
SYNOPSIS
tr [−c|−C] [−s] string1 string2
tr −s [−c|−C] string1
tr −d [−c|−C] string1
tr −ds [−c|−C] string1 string2
DESCRIPTION
The tr utility shall copy the standard input to the standard output with substitution or deletion of
selected characters. The options specified and the string1 and string2 operands shall control
translations that occur while copying characters and single-character collating elements.
OPTIONS
The tr utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax
Guidelines.
The following options shall be supported:
−c Complement the set of values specified by string1. See the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section.
−C Complement the set of characters specified by string1. See the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section.
−d Delete all occurrences of input characters that are specified by string1.
−s Replace instances of repeated characters with a single character, as described in the EXTENDED
DESCRIPTION section.
OPERANDS
The following operands shall be supported:
string1, string2
Translation control strings. Each string shall represent a set of characters to be converted
into an array of characters used for the translation. For a detailed description of how the
strings are interpreted, see the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section.
STDIN
The standard input can be any type of file.
INPUT FILES
None.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of tr:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the
Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the
precedence of internationalization variables used to determine the values of locale
categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization
variables.
LC_COLLATE
Determine the locale for the behavior of range expressions and equivalence classes.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters
(for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments) and the behavior of
character classes.
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic
messages written to standard error.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
The tr output shall be identical to the input, with the exception of the specified transformations.
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
None.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
The operands string1 and string2 (if specified) define two arrays of characters. The constructs in the
following list can be used to specify characters or single-character collating elements. If any of the
constructs result in multi-character collating elements, tr shall exclude, without a diagnostic, those
multi-character elements from the resulting array.
character Any character not described by one of the conventions below shall represent itself.
\octal Octal sequences can be used to represent characters with specific coded values. An octal
sequence shall consist of a <backslash> followed by the longest sequence of one, two, or three-
octal-digit characters (01234567). The sequence shall cause the value whose encoding is
represented by the one, two, or three-digit octal integer to be placed into the array. Multi-
byte characters require multiple, concatenated escape sequences of this type, including the
leading <backslash> for each byte.
\character
The <backslash>-escape sequences in the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Table 5-1,
Escape Sequences and Associated Actions ('\\', '\a', '\b', '\f', '\n', '\r', '\t', '\v') shall
be supported. The results of using any other character, other than an octal digit, following
the <backslash> are unspecified. Also, if there is no character following the <backslash>, the
results are unspecified.
c−c In the POSIX locale, this construct shall represent the range of collating elements between the
range endpoints (as long as neither endpoint is an octal sequence of the form \octal),
inclusive, as defined by the collation sequence. The characters or collating elements in the
range shall be placed in the array in ascending collation sequence. If the second endpoint
precedes the starting endpoint in the collation sequence, it is unspecified whether the range
of collating elements is empty, or this construct is treated as invalid. In locales other than
the POSIX locale, this construct has unspecified behavior.
If either or both of the range endpoints are octal sequences of the form \octal, this shall
represent the range of specific coded values between the two range endpoints, inclusive.
[:class:] Represents all characters belonging to the defined character class, as defined by the current
setting of the LC_CTYPE locale category. The following character class names shall be accepted
when specified in string1:
alnum blank digit lower punct upper
alpha cntrl graph print space xdigit
In addition, character class expressions of the form [:name:] shall be recognized in those
locales where the name keyword has been given a charclass definition in the LC_CTYPE category.
When both the −d and −s options are specified, any of the character class names shall be
accepted in string2. Otherwise, only character class names lower or upper are valid in string2
and then only if the corresponding character class (upper and lower, respectively) is specified
in the same relative position in string1. Such a specification shall be interpreted as a
request for case conversion. When [:lower:] appears in string1 and [:upper:] appears in
string2, the arrays shall contain the characters from the toupper mapping in the LC_CTYPE
category of the current locale. When [:upper:] appears in string1 and [:lower:] appears in
string2, the arrays shall contain the characters from the tolower mapping in the LC_CTYPE
category of the current locale. The first character from each mapping pair shall be in the
array for string1 and the second character from each mapping pair shall be in the array for
string2 in the same relative position.
Except for case conversion, the characters specified by a character class expression shall be
placed in the array in an unspecified order.
If the name specified for class does not define a valid character class in the current locale,
the behavior is undefined.
[=equiv=] Represents all characters or collating elements belonging to the same equivalence class as
equiv, as defined by the current setting of the LC_COLLATE locale category. An equivalence
class expression shall be allowed only in string1, or in string2 when it is being used by the
combined −d and −s options. The characters belonging to the equivalence class shall be placed
in the array in an unspecified order.
[x*n] Represents n repeated occurrences of the character x. Because this expression is used to map
multiple characters to one, it is only valid when it occurs in string2. If n is omitted or is
zero, it shall be interpreted as large enough to extend the string2-based sequence to the
length of the string1-based sequence. If n has a leading zero, it shall be interpreted as an
octal value. Otherwise, it shall be interpreted as a decimal value.
When the −d option is not specified:
* If string2 is present, each input character found in the array specified by string1 shall be replaced
by the character in the same relative position in the array specified by string2. If the array
specified by string2 is shorter that the one specified by string1, or if a character occurs more than
once in string1, the results are unspecified.
* If the −C option is specified, the complements of the characters specified by string1 (the set of all
characters in the current character set, as defined by the current setting of LC_CTYPE, except for
those actually specified in the string1 operand) shall be placed in the array in ascending collation
sequence, as defined by the current setting of LC_COLLATE.
* If the −c option is specified, the complement of the values specified by string1 shall be placed in
the array in ascending order by binary value.
* Because the order in which characters specified by character class expressions or equivalence class
expressions is undefined, such expressions should only be used if the intent is to map several
characters into one. An exception is case conversion, as described previously.
When the −d option is specified:
* Input characters found in the array specified by string1 shall be deleted.
* When the −C option is specified with −d, all characters except those specified by string1 shall be
deleted. The contents of string2 are ignored, unless the −s option is also specified.
* When the −c option is specified with −d, all values except those specified by string1 shall be
deleted. The contents of string2 shall be ignored, unless the −s option is also specified.
* The same string cannot be used for both the −d and the −s option; when both options are specified,
both string1 (used for deletion) and string2 (used for squeezing) shall be required.
When the −s option is specified, after any deletions or translations have taken place, repeated sequences
of the same character shall be replaced by one occurrence of the same character, if the character is
found in the array specified by the last operand. If the last operand contains a character class, such as
the following example:
tr −s '[:space:]'
the last operand's array shall contain all of the characters in that character class. However, in a case
conversion, as described previously, such as:
tr −s '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
the last operand's array shall contain only those characters defined as the second characters in each of
the toupper or tolower character pairs, as appropriate.
An empty string used for string1 or string2 produces undefined results.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 All input was processed successfully.
>0 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
If necessary, string1 and string2 can be quoted to avoid pattern matching by the shell.
If an ordinary digit (representing itself) is to follow an octal sequence, the octal sequence must use
the full three digits to avoid ambiguity.
When string2 is shorter than string1, a difference results between historical System V and BSD systems. A
BSD system pads string2 with the last character found in string2. Thus, it is possible to do the
following:
tr 0123456789 d
which would translate all digits to the letter 'd'. Since this area is specifically unspecified in this
volume of POSIX.1‐2008, both the BSD and System V behaviors are allowed, but a conforming application
cannot rely on the BSD behavior. It would have to code the example in the following way:
tr 0123456789 '[d*]'
It should be noted that, despite similarities in appearance, the string operands used by tr are not
regular expressions.
Unlike some historical implementations, this definition of the tr utility correctly processes NUL
characters in its input stream. NUL characters can be stripped by using:
tr −d '\000'
EXAMPLES
1. The following example creates a list of all words in file1 one per line in file2, where a word is
taken to be a maximal string of letters.
tr −cs "[:alpha:]" "[\n*]" <file1 >file2
2. The next example translates all lowercase characters in file1 to uppercase and writes the results to
standard output.
tr "[:lower:]" "[:upper:]" <file1
3. This example uses an equivalence class to identify accented variants of the base character 'e' in
file1, which are stripped of diacritical marks and written to file2.
tr "[=e=]" "[e*]" <file1 >file2
RATIONALE
In some early proposals, an explicit option −n was added to disable the historical behavior of stripping
NUL characters from the input. It was considered that automatically stripping NUL characters from the
input was not correct functionality. However, the removal of −n in a later proposal does not remove the
requirement that tr correctly process NUL characters in its input stream. NUL characters can be stripped
by using tr −d '\000'.
Historical implementations of tr differ widely in syntax and behavior. For example, the BSD version has
not needed the bracket characters for the repetition sequence. The tr utility syntax is based more
closely on the System V and XPG3 model while attempting to accommodate historical BSD implementations. In
the case of the short string2 padding, the decision was to unspecify the behavior and preserve System V
and XPG3 scripts, which might find difficulty with the BSD method. The assumption was made that BSD
users of tr have to make accommodations to meet the syntax defined here. Since it is possible to use the
repetition sequence to duplicate the desired behavior, whereas there is no simple way to achieve the
System V method, this was the correct, if not desirable, approach.
The use of octal values to specify control characters, while having historical precedents, is not
portable. The introduction of escape sequences for control characters should provide the necessary
portability. It is recognized that this may cause some historical scripts to break.
An early proposal included support for multi-character collating elements. It was pointed out that,
while tr does employ some syntactical elements from REs, the aim of tr is quite different; ranges, for
example, do not have a similar meaning (``any of the chars in the range matches'', versus ``translate
each character in the range to the output counterpart''). As a result, the previously included support
for multi-character collating elements has been removed. What remains are ranges in current collation
order (to support, for example, accented characters), character classes, and equivalence classes.
In XPG3 the [:class:] and [=equiv=] conventions are shown with double brackets, as in RE syntax. However,
tr does not implement RE principles; it just borrows part of the syntax. Consequently, [:class:] and
[=equiv=] should be regarded as syntactical elements on a par with [x*n], which is not an RE bracket
expression.
The standard developers will consider changes to tr that allow it to translate characters between
different character encodings, or they will consider providing a new utility to accomplish this.
On historical System V systems, a range expression requires enclosing square-brackets, such as:
tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'
However, BSD-based systems did not require the brackets, and this convention is used here to avoid
breaking large numbers of BSD scripts:
tr a-z A-Z
The preceding System V script will continue to work because the brackets, treated as regular characters,
are translated to themselves. However, any System V script that relied on "a‐z" representing the three
characters 'a', '−', and 'z' have to be rewritten as "az−".
The ISO POSIX‐2:1993 standard had a −c option that behaved similarly to the −C option, but did not supply
functionality equivalent to the −c option specified in POSIX.1‐2008. This meant that historical practice
of being able to specify tr −cd\000−\177 (which would delete all bytes with the top bit set) would have
no effect because, in the C locale, bytes with the values octal 200 to octal 377 are not characters.
The earlier version also said that octal sequences referred to collating elements and could be placed
adjacent to each other to specify multi-byte characters. However, it was noted that this caused
ambiguities because tr would not be able to tell whether adjacent octal sequences were intending to
specify multi-byte characters or multiple single byte characters. POSIX.1‐2008 specifies that octal
sequences always refer to single byte binary values when used to specify an endpoint of a range of
collating elements.
Earlier versions of this standard allowed for implementations with bytes other than eight bits, but this
has been modified in this version.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
sed
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Table 5-1, Escape Sequences and Associated Actions, Chapter
8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition,
Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc
and The Open Group. (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the event
of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original
IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.unix.org/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced
during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .