Hi, I'm very new to unix/linux and was wondering if you could edit a text file from within a script. e.g if I ran... sh scriptname test Then, the script would insert the word 'test' into the file at a predetermined point e.g after the first line. Apologies if this is already covered somewhere I did search. Thanks

Have a look at "sed" instead....

ok wil do -thanks

For this particular problem, I like awk: awk ' { if(NR == 2) print "test"; print $0 } ' myfile Although it's not commonly done, you can call vi within a script using the unix "here" document: #!/bin/ksh text="test" vi myfile << MSG o$(printf "%s" "$text") $(echo '\033'):wq MSG # end script All the keystrokes after vi'ing the file go within the here document - open the line below line 1, enter the string with printf, press the escape key, write and quit. I don't care for it myself.

I have created simple to complex editing scripts using ex. I generally put the scripts into a file. ex myfile < myscript ex is preferred to vi because using vi in a script results in strange stuff on your terminal.

Thanks to everyone that replied. I went with the 'sed' method but the other replys look interesting and I shall look at them further in the future. Thanks for all your help

If vi's output is causing you problems, simply send it to /dev/null: #!/bin/ksh text="test" vi myfile.txt > /dev/null << MSG o$(printf "%s" "$text") $(echo '\033'):wq MSG > garbage.txt