changing the order of items in a list I have a file with plain text. This file contains a list like this: @"Joe", @"211", @"Bob Nelson", @"132", @"Jack Sierra", @"3422", @"Walt Robert", @"14", The list goes on and on with thousands of names... I need to switch the elements order and transform this list to @"211", @"Joe", @"132", @"Bob Nelson", @"3422", @"Jack Sierra", @"14", @"Walt Robert", How do I do it from terminal?

This one will work with strings with spaces in it:


sed 's/\(@"[^"]*"\), \(@"[^"]*"\)/\2, \1/' input.txt


**How it works:**

sed - (s)tream (ed)itor will execute (s)ubstosute command on each line of input,
and replaces `\(@"[^"]*"\), \(@"[^"]*"\)` with the `\2, \1`.

The `\2` means second match (from the second braces)
The `\1` means first match (from the first braces).

Braces must be escaped, so we have `\(` and `\)`. Inside we look for `@` character, then `"` character and then `[^"]` any characters different than `"` repeated anytime and then the `"` character.

Then we expect `,` comma followed by the space and similar second group for the `\2`.