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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-10T21:47:19+00:00

I recently found out that this simple sed expression work fine on Linux or

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I recently found out that this simple sed expression work fine on Linux or under Cygwin but fails on Mac with an “undefined label” error:

$ sed '/SUCCESSFUL/d ; /\[java\]/!b label; s/\s\+\[java\]//; /^\s*$$/d; /Compiling/!d; :label /^\s*$$/d; s/^/monitor: /'
sed: 1: "/SUCCESSFUL/d ; /\[java ...": undefined label 'label; s/\s\+\[java\]//; /^\s*$$/d; /Compiling/!d; :label /^\s*$$/d; s/^/monitor: /'

sed on MacOS is a BSD variant with different options than the GNU counterpart. However man sed clearly indicates the MacOS version of sed supports labels, so why this error, and most important how to solve it?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The name of the label terminates with the first literal newline, not at the semi-colon. There are two easy ways to solve the problem. Add literal newlines:

     sed '/SUCCESSFUL/d 
    /\[java\]/!b label
    s/\s\+\[java\]//
    /^\s*$$/d; /Compiling/!d
    :label
    /^\s*$$/d
    s/^/monitor: /'

    Or use multiple -e options:

    sed -e '/SUCCESSFUL/d ; /\[java\]/!b label' \
  -e 's/\s\+\[java\]//; /^\s*$$/d; /Compiling/!d' \
  -e':label' -e'/^\s*$$/d; s/^/monitor: /'
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