coreutils (9.4)

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tr.1
TR(1) User Commands TR(1)

NAME
tr - translate or delete characters

SYNOPSIS
tr [OPTION]... STRING1 [STRING2]

DESCRIPTION
Translate, squeeze, and/or delete characters from standard input, writing to standard output. STRING1 and
STRING2 specify arrays of characters ARRAY1 and ARRAY2 that control the action.

-c, -C, --complement
use the complement of ARRAY1

-d, --delete
delete characters in ARRAY1, do not translate

-s, --squeeze-repeats
replace each sequence of a repeated character that is listed in the last specified ARRAY, with a single
occurrence of that character

-t, --truncate-set1
first truncate ARRAY1 to length of ARRAY2

--help display this help and exit

--version
output version information and exit

ARRAYs 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 ARRAY2, copies of CHAR until length of ARRAY1

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

[:alnum:]
all letters and digits

[:alpha:]
all letters

[:blank:]
all horizontal whitespace

[:cntrl:]
all control characters

[: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 STRING1 and STRING2 appear. -t is only significant when translat‐
ing. ARRAY2 is extended to length of ARRAY1 by repeating its last character as necessary. Excess characters of
ARRAY2 are ignored. Character classes expand in unspecified order; while translating, [:lower:] and [:upper:]
may be used in pairs to specify case conversion. Squeezing occurs after translation or deletion.

BUGS
Full support is available only for safe single-byte locales, in which every possible input byte represents a sin‐
gle character. The C locale is safe in GNU systems, so you can avoid this issue in the shell by running LC_ALL=C
tr instead of plain tr.

AUTHOR
Written by Jim Meyering.

REPORTING BUGS
GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/li‐
censes/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted
by law.

SEE ALSO
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/tr>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) tr invocation'

GNU coreutils 9.4 August 2023 TR(1)