Red - Rust Stream Editor

An experimental drop-in replacement for GNU sed, written in Rust.

About This Project

This project started as an experiment to understand how far one can go in creating a Rust replacement for GNU sed.

Functional Compatibility: As far as I know, red currently achieves 100% functional compatibility with GNU sed behavior.

Performance: There's still work to be done on the performance front. For performance comparisons and benchmarks, please refer to the Benchmarking section below.

Documentation: For usage instructions, please refer to the GNU sed manual. Red is designed to work exactly like GNU sed.

Features

• GNU sed Compatible: Drop-in replacement for GNU sed
• Cross-Platform: Runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows
• SELinux Support: Preserves SELinux contexts during in-place editing (Linux)
• Memory Safe: Written in Rust
• Full Command Support: All GNU sed commands

Command-Line Options

Usage: red [OPTION]... {SCRIPT} [FILE]...
       red [OPTION]... -e SCRIPT... -f FILE... [FILE]...

Options:
  -n, --quiet, --silent    suppress automatic printing of pattern space
  -e SCRIPT, --expression=SCRIPT
                           add the script to the commands to be executed
  -f FILE, --file=FILE     add the contents of script-file to the commands
  -i[SUFFIX], --in-place[=SUFFIX]
                           edit files in place (makes backup if SUFFIX supplied)
  -r, -E, --regexp-extended
                           use extended regular expressions
  -s, --separate           consider files as separate rather than continuous
  -l N, --line-length=N    specify line-wrap length for 'l' command
  -u, --unbuffered         load minimal amounts of data and flush output often
  -z, --null-data          use NUL character as line separator
      --posix              disable all GNU extensions
      --follow-symlinks    follow symlinks when processing in place
      --sandbox            disable e/r/w commands
      --help               display this help and exit
      --version            output version information and exit

Architecture

Red uses a two-phase architecture:

1. Compile Phase: Parse and validate scripts once
2. Execute Phase: Apply commands to input data

For detailed documentation, see ARCHITECTURE.md.

Testing

Running Tests

# Unit tests
cargo test

# Fetch GNU sed tests (required once)
./scripts/fetch_gnused_tests.sh

# GNU sed compatibility tests
./scripts/run_gnused_tests.sh

# Specific test
./scripts/run_gnused_tests.sh --test-pattern "help.sh"

# Fast mode
./scripts/run_gnused_tests.sh --fast

Benchmarking

Compare performance with GNU sed:

# Install hyperfine
cargo install hyperfine

# Run benchmarks
./scripts/benchmark.sh

# Custom runs
RUNS=50 WARMUP=5 ./scripts/benchmark.sh

RED_BIN=./target/release/red SED_BIN=/usr/bin/sed ./scripts/benchmark.sh

Development

Building

# Debug build
cargo build

# Release build
cargo build --release

# Build with SELinux support (Linux only)
cargo build --release --features selinux

Releases

Download

Pre-built binaries are available on the Releases page:

Install

From crates.io:

cargo install red-sed

Linux:

curl -LO https://github.com/vyavdoshenko/red/releases/latest/download/red-linux-x86_64-musl.tar.gz
tar -xzf red-linux-x86_64-musl.tar.gz
sudo mv red /usr/local/bin/

macOS:

curl -LO https://github.com/vyavdoshenko/red/releases/latest/download/red-darwin-aarch64.tar.gz
tar -xzf red-darwin-aarch64.tar.gz
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine red   # Remove Gatekeeper quarantine
sudo mv red /usr/local/bin/

Verify:

red --version

Creating a Release (Maintainers)

1. Update version in red/Cargo.toml
2. Commit changes
3. Create and push a tag:

git tag v1.0.0
git push origin v1.0.0

GitHub Actions will automatically build all platforms and create a release with artifacts.

Use - in tag for pre-releases (e.g., v1.0.0-beta).

License

MIT