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  • Thanks. I'm stunned at how simple a soution that is. I don't understand why it just operates on the first occurance on each row, rather than finding and moifying each occurance of , Commented Jun 26, 2024 at 13:23
  • The second example also works as expected for my need, but I don't understand what the pattern .. and 10 do in terms of finding the 19th and 20th character, Commented Jun 26, 2024 at 13:23
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    @XJMZX because that's how the s/old/new/ substitution operator works. It would only replace all occurrences if you explicitly tell it do do so using g, like this: sed 's/, /x/g' file . Commented Jun 26, 2024 at 13:24
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    @XJMZX since the pattern is .., which is two characters long, the first match for .. would be the first two characters. Consider echo abcd | sed 's/../xx/2' which returns abxx. That is because the first occurrence of .. would be ab and the second is cd. In other words, the second pair of characters corresponds to characters 3 and 4, just lke the first pair would be 1 and 2. Similarly, the 10th pair of characters corresponds to the 19th and 20th character. Commented Jun 26, 2024 at 13:28
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    Thanks for the explanations. Makes sense now. I guess I was approaching this all wrong from not understanding how it works. Since this is the simplest solution, I'll mark this correct answer. Perhaps I should have wrote the question differently. My bad. Commented Jun 26, 2024 at 13:36