POSIXly(在sed中也有效)，只使用一个正则表达式，只需要一行内存(和往常一样):

sed '/\(#include\).*/!b;//{h;s//\1 "newfile.h"/;G};:1;n;b1'

解释道:

sed '
/\(#include\).*/!b          # Only one regex used. On lines not matching
                            # the text  `#include` **yet**,
                            # branch to end, cause the default print. Re-start.
//{                         # On first line matching previous regex.
    h                       # hold the line.
    s//\1 "newfile.h"/      # append ` "newfile.h"` to the `#include` matched.
    G                       # append a newline.
  }                         # end of replacement.
:1                          # Once **one** replacement got done (the first match)
n                           # Loop continually reading a line each time
b1                          # and printing it by default.
'                           # end of sed script.

这里可能的解决方案是告诉编译器包含头文件，而不在源文件中提到它。在GCC中有这些选项:

   -include file
       Process file as if "#include "file"" appeared as the first line of
       the primary source file.  However, the first directory searched for
       file is the preprocessor's working directory instead of the
       directory containing the main source file.  If not found there, it
       is searched for in the remainder of the "#include "..."" search
       chain as normal.

       If multiple -include options are given, the files are included in
       the order they appear on the command line.

   -imacros file
       Exactly like -include, except that any output produced by scanning
       file is thrown away.  Macros it defines remain defined.  This
       allows you to acquire all the macros from a header without also
       processing its declarations.

       All files specified by -imacros are processed before all files
       specified by -include.

微软的编译器有/FI(强制包含)选项。

这个特性对于一些常见的头文件来说很方便，比如平台配置。Linux内核的Makefile为此使用-include。

我终于得到了这个工作在一个Bash脚本用来插入一个唯一的时间戳在每个项目在RSS提要:

        sed "1,/====RSSpermalink====/s/====RSSpermalink====/${nowms}/" \
            production-feed2.xml.tmp2 > production-feed2.xml.tmp.$counter

它只改变第一个事件。

${nowms}是Perl脚本设置的以毫秒为单位的时间，$counter是脚本中用于循环控制的计数器，\允许命令在下一行继续执行。

文件被读入，stdout被重定向到工作文件。

我理解它的方式，1，/====RSSpermalink====/告诉sed什么时候通过设置范围限制来停止，然后s/====RSSpermalink====/${nowms}/是熟悉的sed命令，用第二个字符串替换第一个字符串。

在我的例子中，我把命令放在双引号中，因为我在一个带有变量的Bash脚本中使用它。

#!/bin/sed -f
1,/^#include/ {
    /^#include/i\
#include "newfile.h"
}

该脚本的工作原理:对于第1行和第一个#include(在第1行之后)之间的行，如果该行以#include开头，则在指定的行前面加上。

但是，如果第一个#include在第1行，那么第1行和下一个#include都将有该行前置。如果您正在使用GNU sed，它有一个扩展，其中0，/^#include/(而不是1，)将做正确的事情。

sed脚本只将“Apple”第一次出现的位置替换为“Banana”

例子

     Input:      Output:

     Apple       Banana
     Apple       Apple
     Orange      Orange
     Apple       Apple

这是一个简单的脚本:编辑注:只适用于GNU sed。

sed '0,/Apple/{s/Apple/Banana/}' input_filename

前两个参数0和/Apple/是范围说明符。s/Apple/Banana/是在这个范围内执行的。因此，在这种情况下，“在Apple的开始(0)到第一个实例的范围内，将Apple替换为Banana。只有第一代苹果会被取代。

Background: In traditional sed the range specifier is also "begin here" and "end here" (inclusive). However the lowest "begin" is the first line (line 1), and if the "end here" is a regex, then it is only attempted to match against on the next line after "begin", so the earliest possible end is line 2. So since range is inclusive, smallest possible range is "2 lines" and smallest starting range is both lines 1 and 2 (i.e. if there's an occurrence on line 1, occurrences on line 2 will also be changed, not desired in this case). GNU sed adds its own extension of allowing specifying start as the "pseudo" line 0 so that the end of the range can be line 1, allowing it a range of "only the first line" if the regex matches the first line.

或者一个简化版本(空的RE，如//，意味着重用之前指定的，所以这是等价的):

sed '0,/Apple/{s//Banana/}' input_filename

对于s命令，花括号是可选的，所以这也是等价的:

sed '0,/Apple/s//Banana/' input_filename

所有这些工作都只在GNU上进行。

你也可以使用homebrew brew install GNU -sed在OS X上安装GNU sed。

如果有人来这里替换所有行中第一次出现的字符(比如我自己)，使用这个:

sed '/old/s/old/new/1' file

-bash-4.2$ cat file
123a456a789a
12a34a56
a12
-bash-4.2$ sed '/a/s/a/b/1' file
123b456a789a
12b34a56
b12

例如，通过将1改为2，你可以只替换所有的第二个a。