TR(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual TR(1P)PROLOG
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NAMEtr — translate characters
SYNOPSIStr [−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 spec‐
ified and the string1 and string2 operands shall control translations
that occur while copying characters and single-character collating ele‐
ments.
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 char‐
acter, 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 vari‐
ables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions vol‐
ume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization Vari‐
ables 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 behav‐
ior 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 con‐
structs 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 spe‐
cific 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 <back‐
slash> for each byte.
\character
The <backslash>-escape sequences in the Base Definitions vol‐
ume of POSIX.1‐2008, Table 5-1, Escape Sequences and Associ‐
ated 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 charac‐
ters or collating elements in the range shall be placed in
the array in ascending collation sequence. If the second end‐
point 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 spe‐
cific coded values between the two range endpoints, inclu‐
sive.
[: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 cate‐
gory.
When both the −d and −s options are specified, any of the
character class names shall be accepted in string2. Other‐
wise, 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 rel‐
ative 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 char‐
acter 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 cur‐
rent setting of the LC_COLLATE locale category. An equiva‐
lence 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 inter‐
preted 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 speci‐
fied 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 previ‐
ously, 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 match‐
ing 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 his‐
torical System V and BSD systems. A BSD system pads string2 with the
last character found in string2. Thus, it is possible to do the fol‐
lowing:
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 fol‐
lowing 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 util‐
ity correctly processes NUL characters in its input stream. NUL charac‐
ters 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 let‐
ters.
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 vari‐
ants of the base character 'e' in file1, which are stripped of dia‐
critical 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 assump‐
tion 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 desir‐
able, 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 portabil‐
ity. It is recognized that this may cause some historical scripts to
break.
An early proposal included support for multi-character collating ele‐
ments. It was pointed out that, while tr does employ some syntactical
elements from REs, the aim of tr is quite different; ranges, for exam‐
ple, 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 charac‐
ters), 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 princi‐
ples; 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 con‐
vention 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 brack‐
ets, treated as regular characters, are translated to themselves. How‐
ever, 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 collat‐
ing elements and could be placed adjacent to each other to specify
multi-byte characters. However, it was noted that this caused ambigui‐
ties 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 end‐
point 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 ver‐
sion.
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 Electri‐
cal 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.ker‐
nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2013 TR(1P)
