Back to main site | Back to man page index

TR(1)                                               User Commands                                               TR(1)



NAME
       tr - translate or delete characters

SYNOPSIS
       tr [OPTION]... SET1 [SET2]

DESCRIPTION
       Translate, squeeze, and/or delete characters from standard input, writing to standard output.

       -c, -C, --complement
              use the complement of SET1

       -d, --delete
              delete characters in SET1, do not translate

       -s, --squeeze-repeats
              replace  each input sequence of a repeated character that is listed in SET1 with a single occurrence of
              that character

       -t, --truncate-set1
              first truncate SET1 to length of SET2

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

       SETs are specified as strings of characters.  Most represent themselves.  Interpreted sequences are:

       \NNN   character with octal value NNN (1 to 3 octal digits)

       \\     backslash

       \a     audible BEL

       \b     backspace

       \f     form feed

       \n     new line

       \r     return

       \t     horizontal tab

       \v     vertical tab

       CHAR1-CHAR2
              all characters from CHAR1 to CHAR2 in ascending order

       [CHAR*]
              in SET2, copies of CHAR until length of SET1

       [CHAR*REPEAT]
              REPEAT copies of CHAR, REPEAT octal if starting with 0


       [:digit:]
              all digits

       [:graph:]
              all printable characters, not including space

       [:lower:]
              all lower case letters

       [:print:]
              all printable characters, including space

       [:punct:]
              all punctuation characters

       [:space:]
              all horizontal or vertical whitespace

       [:upper:]
              all upper case letters

       [:xdigit:]
              all hexadecimal digits

       [=CHAR=]
              all characters which are equivalent to CHAR

       Translation occurs if -d is not given and both SET1 and SET2 appear.  -t may be used  only  when  translating.
       SET2  is  extended  to length of SET1 by repeating its last character as necessary.  Excess characters of SET2
       are ignored.  Only [:lower:] and [:upper:] are guaranteed to expand in ascending order;  used  in  SET2  while
       translating,  they  may only be used in pairs to specify case conversion.  -s uses SET1 if not translating nor
       deleting; else squeezing uses SET2 and occurs after translation or deletion.

       GNU  coreutils  online  help:  <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>  Report   tr   translation   bugs   to
       <http://translationproject.org/team/>

AUTHOR
       Written by Jim Meyering.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright   ©   2013   Free   Software   Foundation,  Inc.   License  GPLv3+:  GNU  GPL  version  3  or  later
       <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.  There is NO WARRANTY, to the  extent  per‐
       mitted by law.

SEE ALSO
       The  full  documentation  for  tr is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the info and tr programs are properly
       installed at your site, the command

              info coreutils 'tr invocation'

       should give you access to the complete manual.