is there anyway I can edit from the command line such as I have a document where I want to delete line 16 and then replace it with something else but I just want to do it from the command line is that possible? John

you could use emacs, vi, possibly joe, or others (ed is "line-oriented"), but if this is to involve doing the same thing to many files, look into sed, awk, and even bash or perl scripting

Thanks for the advice.. I can do that using vi can you give a little mor insight John

Do vi file, then press i to go into insert mode. ^c gets you back into command mode, where :s [enter] saves, and :q [enter] quits. Also, try :help.

Or better yet, use pico since most of the commands are displayed at the bottom of the screen! Personally, I use vi but I've found out that most people who don't know a whole lot about Unix or text editing in Unix would perfer pico... Lawrence