sed command with -i option failing on Mac, but works on Linux

If you use the -i option you need to provide an extension for your backups.

If you have:

File1.txt
File2.cfg

The command (note the lack of space between -i and '' and the -e to make it work on new versions of Mac and on GNU):

sed -i'.original' -e 's/old_link/new_link/g' *

Create 2 backup files like:

File1.txt.original
File2.cfg.original

There is no portable way to avoid making backup files because it is impossible to find a mix of sed commands that works on all cases:

• sed -i -e ... – does not work on OS X as it creates -e backups
• sed -i'' -e ... – does not work on OS X 10.6 but works on 10.9+
• sed -i '' -e ... – not working on GNU

Note Given that there isn’t a sed command working on all platforms, you can try to use another command to achieve the same result.

E.g., perl -i -pe's/old_link/new_link/g' *