The tr command, short for "translate," is a powerful utility in Linux and Unix systems used for transforming and manipulating text data from standard input. It allows for operations such as character replacement, deletion, case conversion, and squeezing of repeated characters. The tr command is commonly used in conjunction with other commands through piping to achieve more complex text processing tasks.

Basic Syntax and Usage

The basic syntax of the tr command is as follows:

The command works with two sets of characters, where SET1 is the set of characters to be replaced or removed, and SET2 is the set of characters to replace those in SET1. For example, to replace all occurrences of 'a' with 'b', you would use:

This would output 'bnnbnb'.

Character Classes and Ranges