I am a beginner of shell scripts. I need help in writing a script for replacing duplicate of multiple lines in a list of files in a directory with some other lines. For example, I have got some files in a dir named a, b, and c, and in each file there is a paragraph "etc etc etc... and etc" in it, and I want to replace the "etc etc etc... and etc" with "cte cte cte... and cte" for all files a, b, and c. There is no need for input error checking and it is assumed that the list of files is known in advance and that there will be the exact same paragraph in every file in that list. Many thanks in advance. Peggy :)

This will replace every line that has "etc etc etc" with "cte cte cte" in files a b & c: cd /dir/with/files/ for i in `ls a b c` ; do sed 's/etc etc etc/cte cte cte/g' $i > $i.$$ mv $i.$$ $i done -jim