Sed newline

[Derose, Steve \(NIH/NLM/NCBI\) [C]]

I understand that sed is supposed to allow you to insert a newline via
the s command, by putting backslash and an actual end of line in a
script.
 
Here, it works under tcsh and sh, but not bash (which is the local
default).
With bash, for the script:
 
#!/bin/tcsh
# test if sed can insert a newline.
cat $* | sed 's/here/\
here/g'

I get:
 
sed: -e expression #1, char 7: Unterminated `s' command
 
If I switch to double quotes, bash instead silently fails to insert the
newlines.
 
Please consider adding numeric escapes for inserting untypable
characters into the s command. This would be less prone to shell
dependencies, and
provide a workaround for any kind of odd character problems that may
crop up. 
 
In fact, I think it would be really great if a single escaping mechanism
were introduced into *all* linux commands (well, I suppose 'yes' would
be kind of pointless...) -- that way I'd never have to remember which
ones takes which mechanism. No need to take out other existing ones, but
why not have a single
unescaping library routine, that eventually gets used by everything that
might need escaping at all? 
 
But sed is the biggest need I run into (there being no cleaner way I've
found to insert newlines before any string or regex I want).
 
Thanks!
 
Steve DeRose
 
Steve DeRose (contractor)
National Center for Biotechnology Information
address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>