Hi, I'm kind of a linux newbie so please forgive any stupid questions or commenets. I'm trying to edit a text document using the sed command. I basically want to be able to go to a specific spot and change the data. The document looks similar to this: row1: 39 row2: 49 row3: 85 etc.... Just as an example, I'd like to go and change whatever is at the end of row3 to another number. So after the edition the document will look like this. row1: 39 row2: 49 row3: 99 etc.... I'd prefer to do this in userspace with the sed command but if anyone has a simplier way let me know. The text may contain multiple instances of the same number other wise I could probably just do sed -i 's/85$/99/' filename That's about it. Any help is appreciated. OJ

Have a look on IBM's developer works site, theres a good sed tutorial. http://www-130.ibm.com/developerworks/ you'll have to register but it's free.

sed -e "/row3/s/:.*$/: 99/" inputfile > outputfile

Hello, Thanks for the replies. I tried the follwoing like you suggested and it didn't work. sed -e "/row3/s/:.*$/: 99/" inputfile > outputfile It gives me this error: sed: -e expression #1, char 16: Unterminated `s' commnad OJ

What version of sed are you using? sed -V the sample should work.