TR(1)                   System General Commands Manual                   TR(1)

NAME
     tr - translate characters

SYNOPSIS
     tr [-cs] string1 string2
     tr [-c] -d string1
     tr [-c] -s string1
     tr [-c] -ds string1 string2

DESCRIPTION
     The tr utility copies the standard input to the standard output with sub-
     stitution or deletion of selected characters.

     The options are as follows:

     -c      Complements the set of characters in string1; for instance,
             ``-c ab'' includes every character except for ``a'' and ``b''.

     -d      The -d option causes characters to be deleted from the input.

     -s      The -s option squeezes multiple occurrences of the characters
             listed in the last operand (either string1 or string2) in the
             input into a single instance of the character.  This occurs after
             all deletion and translation is completed.

     In the first synopsis form, the characters in string1 are translated into
     the characters in string2 where the first character in string1 is trans-
     lated into the first character in string2 and so on.  If string1 is
     longer than string2, the last character found in string2 is duplicated
     until string1 is exhausted.

     In the second synopsis form, the characters in string1 are deleted from
     the input.

     In the third synopsis form, the characters in string1 are compressed as
     described for the -s option.

     In the fourth synopsis form, the characters in string1 are deleted from
     the input, and the characters in string2 are compressed as described for
     the -s option.

     The following conventions can be used in string1 and string2 to specify
     sets of characters:

     character  Any character not described by one of the following conven-
                tions represents itself.

     \octal     A backslash followed by 1, 2, or 3 octal digits represents a
                character with that encoded value.  To follow an octal
                sequence with a digit as a character, left zero-pad the octal
                sequence to the full 3 octal digits.

     \character
                A backslash followed by certain special characters maps to
                special values.

                \a   
                \b   
                \f   
                \n   
                \r   
                \t   
                \v   

                A backslash followed by any other character maps to that char-
                acter.

     c-c        Represents the range of characters between the range end-
                points, inclusively.

     [:class:]  Represents all characters belonging to the defined character
                class.  Class names are:

                alnum     
                alpha     
                blank     
                cntrl     
                digit     
                graph     
                lower     
                print     
                punct     
                space     
                upper     
                xdigit    

                With the exception of the ``upper'' and ``lower'' classes,
                characters in the classes are in unspecified order.  In the
                ``upper'' and ``lower'' classes, characters are entered in
                ascending order.

                For specific information as to which ASCII characters are
                included in these classes, see ctype(3) and related manual
                pages.

     [=equiv=]  Represents all characters or collating (sorting) elements
                belonging to the same equivalence class as equiv.  If there is
                a secondary ordering within the equivalence class, the charac-
                ters are ordered in ascending sequence.  Otherwise, they are
                ordered after their encoded values.  An example of an equiva-
                lence class might be ``c'' and ``ch'' in Spanish; English has
                no equivalence classes.

     [#*n]      Represents n repeated occurrences of the character represented
                by #.  This expression is only valid when it occurs in
                string2.  If n is omitted or is zero, it is be interpreted as
                large enough to extend string2 sequence to the length of
                string1.  If n has a leading zero, it is interpreted as an
                octal value; otherwise, it's interpreted as a decimal value.

EXIT STATUS
     The tr utility exits 0 on success or >0 if an error occurred.

EXAMPLES
     The following examples are shown as given to the shell:

     Create a list of the words in file1, one per line, where a word is taken
     to be a maximal string of letters.

           $ tr -cs "[:alpha:]" "\n" < file1

     Translate the contents of file1 to upper-case.

           $ tr "[:lower:]" "[:upper:]" < file1

     Strip out non-printable characters from file1.

           $ tr -cd "[:print:]" < file1

SEE ALSO
     sed(1)

STANDARDS
     System V has historically implemented character ranges using the syntax
     ``[c-c]'' instead of the ``c-c'' used by historic BSD implementations and
     standardized by POSIX.  System V shell scripts should work under this
     implementation as long as the range is intended to map in another range,
     i.e., the command ``tr [a-z] [A-Z]'' will work as it will map the [``''
     character in string1 to the [``'' character in string2.  However, if the
     shell script is deleting or squeezing characters as in the command
     ``tr -d [a-z]'', the characters [``'' and ``]'' will be included in the
     deletion or compression list, which would not have happened under an his-
     toric System V implementation.  Additionally, any scripts that depended
     on the sequence ``a-z'' to represent the three characters ``a'', ``-'',
     and ``z'' will have to be rewritten as ``a\-z''.

     The tr utility has historically not permitted the manipulation of NUL
     bytes in its input and, additionally, has stripped NUL's from its input
     stream.  This implementation has removed this behavior as a bug.

     The tr utility has historically been extremely forgiving of syntax
     errors: for example, the -c and -s options were ignored unless two
     strings were specified.  This implementation will not permit illegal syn-
     tax.

     The tr conforms to POSIX 1003.2 and SUS standards.  It should be noted
     that the feature wherein the last character of string2 is duplicated if
     string2 has less characters than string1 is permitted by POSIX but is not
     required.  Shell scripts attempting to be portable to other POSIX systems
     should use the ``[#*]'' convention instead of relying on this behavior.

Interix                          July 10, 2006                         Interix