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Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:42:49 +0300
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT gnu DOT org>
Subject: Re: GNU sed question
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> From: Mike <no AT please DOT dont DOT invalid>
> Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:05:56 -0400
> Injection-Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:05:58 +0000 (UTC)
> Bytes: 2028
> 
> Why does sed change all the first occurences of AA on each line to ZZ?
> I expect sed to change only the first line:
> 
> C:\>cat a
> AAoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooAAooooooooooooo
> ooAAoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooAAooooooooooooo
> oooooooooooooooooooAAooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
> ooooooAAoooooooooooooooooooooooooooAAooooooooooooo
> ooooooooooAAoooooooooooooooooooooooAAooooooooooooo
> 
> C:\>sed s/^AA/ZZ/ a
> ZZoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooAAooooooooooooo
> ooZZoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooAAooooooooooooo
> oooooooooooooooooooZZooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
> ooooooZZoooooooooooooooooooooooooooAAooooooooooooo
> ooooooooooZZoooooooooooooooooooooooAAooooooooooooo

My crystal ball says that you did this on Windows, where cmd.exe, the
system shell, uses ^ as an escape character.  So Sed gets just
"s/AA/ZZ/", with predictable results.

Try including the whole command in quotes, like this:

   C:\>sed "s/^AA/ZZ/" a