Built for EDA text edits
Every command, every example is anchored in a real RTL/DV task — filelist rewrites, +incdir migrations, +UVM_TESTNAME swaps, SDC corner renames, UVM log cleanup. No generic Linux-admin content.
Four stages, one recommended progression
A recommended order, not a gate. The execution model makes commands predictable rather than memorised, regular expressions and addressing make a transformation precise, and safe editing precedes any batch change. Advanced processing — hold space, multiline, branching — is depth for when a task needs it, not a prerequisite. Choosing the right tool matters more than recalling syntax.
Edit → review → ship
What sed is genuinely for: filelist and include-path migrations, simulator-script maintenance, scoped configuration updates, SDC and corner renames, UVM and regression log normalisation — each a reviewable transformation backed by a dry run and a diff. sed edits text and does not parse HDL, so a rename that turns on scope, hierarchy or macro expansion belongs to a syntax-aware tool.
Your Learning Roadmap
45 chapters · 12 modules — four stages — what sed is and the cycle it runs, the command language itself, the safety discipline a mass edit needs, and the filelist, simulation, synthesis and STA work it is actually for.
Part I — Foundations
What sed is and the model it runs on: the engineering problem a stream editor solves, where it appears in an RTL-to-signoff flow, how it differs from grep, awk and Python, and the read-apply-print cycle that explains every command in the rest of the curriculum.
Part II — Core sed Mastery
sed as a language, in dependency order: substitution in full, then the regular-expression dialects and the addresses that decide which lines a command may touch, then printing, deleting, inserting and scoped command blocks — closing with the stateful depth of hold space, multiline processing and branching.
Part III — Safe Engineering Automation
The discipline that makes a mass edit reviewable rather than an incident: what in-place editing really does, GNU and BSD portability, dry runs and diff validation, regex overmatching, sed inside pipelines and scripts, NUL-safe file selection, and the point at which the task belongs in Tcl or Python instead.
Part IV — Semiconductor Applications
Parts I–III applied to the work itself, never re-teaching them: filelist and include-path migration, identifier renaming and the limits of text-based RTL refactoring, simulator run-script updates, UVM and regression log normalisation, synthesis and STA script maintenance, and four case studies ending in the review reasoning a mass edit has to survive.