we recieve a xml file daily....that has the following info. <Image1 vt="9" clsid="{A503C21E}"> <ImageState vt="3">2</ImageState> <ImageReason vt="3">0</ImageReason> <ImageJobID vt="8">{F16034AD}</ImageJobID> </Image1> <Image2 vt="9" clsid="{A503C21E}"> <ImageState vt="3">3</ImageState> <ImageReason vt="3">0</ImageReason> <ImageJobID vt="8">{F16035AD}</ImageJobID> </Image2> <Image1 vt="9" clsid="{A503C21E}"> <ImageState vt="3">4</ImageState> <ImageReason vt="3">0</ImageReason> <ImageJobID vt="8">{F16036AD}</ImageJobID> </Image1> Now I want to replace the Image1,Image2,Image3 tags with Image. In the original file it can be any like Image1...Image10000. so I need to replace all the tags to Image. And there will be 5000 files every day to be processed like this. Can anybody help me in fixing this? Thanks in advance. Samar

Here is the hard part, replacing the tags: sed -e 's/^<Image[0-9]*/<Image/' -e 's/^<\/Image[0-9]*/<\/Image/' myfile.xml

above solution is working if the xml file is indented. My files are not indented....from first to last they are on one line. I tried the above solutions on unindented files, but it is not working. Please provide me the solution for an unindented file. Thanks Samar

sed -e 's/<Image[0-9]*/<Image/g' -e 's/<\/Image[0-9]*/<\/Image/g' myfile.txt