title: How do I use sed to replace decimal exponential values with 0 in a data file
body: <p>My problem is that in among a column of data there are a few values that are exponentials, usually in the form of 2.796e-05.
  The decimal value in front of the 'e' always varies but it seems like its always to e-05.</p>
  
  <p>So what i've been trying so far (having tried various amounts of changes in the hopes it'll work) is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>sed -i -e 's/[0-9]*\.[0-9]*e-05/0/g' datafile.txt
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>All of my attempts so far have not had any result. Now im sure im just leaving out one little thing or something similar to that extent but I just cant see it, so any help will be appreciated.</p>
  
  <p>As requested:
  The input is a large file in the form of</p>
  
  <p>19990207        8.891   6.1756  07/02/1999   9.707767       Q31<br>
  19990208    0.87234 5.2431  08/02/1999   10.239032      Q31<br>
  19990209    <strong>4.8225e-06</strong>  4.2400  09/02/1999   12.312976      Q31<br>
  19990210    0.00013825  5.3127  10/02/1999   10.353386      Q31<br>
  <em>(The above is tab seperated but I have no idea how to show this here)</em></p>
  
  <p>For the output I basically just wont the bolded part to be 0. But instead of getting 0's in the places where there are exponentials nothing seems to happen and the output remains the same as the input.</p>
  
  <p>The script in which the code is used is a bit long but I can post it if it will help.</p>