[linux] Using sed to split a string with a delimiter

I have a string in the following format:

string1:string2:string3:string4:string5

I'm trying to use sed to split the string on : and print each sub-string on a new line. Here is what I'm doing:

cat ~/Desktop/myfile.txt | sed s/:/\\n/

This prints:

string1
string2:string3:string4:string5

How can I get it to split on each delimiter?

This should do it:

cat ~/Desktop/myfile.txt | sed s/:/\\n/g

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed 'y/:/\n/' file

or perhaps:

sed y/:/$"\n"/ file

Using \n in sed is non-portable. The portable way to do what you want with sed is:

sed 's/:/\
/g' ~/Desktop/myfile.txt

but in reality this isn't a job for sed anyway, it's the job tr was created to do:

tr ':' '
' < ~/Desktop/myfile.txt

Using simply tr :

$ tr ':' $'\n' <<< string1:string2:string3:string4:string5
string1
string2
string3
string4
string5

If you really need sed :

$ sed 's/:/\n/g' <<< string1:string2:string3:string4:string5
string1
string2
string3
string4
string5

If you're using gnu sed then you can use \x0A for newline:

sed 's/:/\x0A/g' ~/Desktop/myfile.txt