Cool this seems to work. The problem I have now is that the string I am trying to insert contains the ' character which conflicts with the sed '1i\ line. Ordaniril they get ignored.

If I try to escape this string:

sed '1i\
EXEC PR_DbConfigStart \'test.txt\', \'10\', \'DESCRIPTION\' \
GO ' < $FILENAME > $TMPFILENAME

I get this error
syntax error at line 8 : `'' unmatched

if I try to build the string in an environment variable and rely on substitution, the string does nt seem to get substituted.


DBCONFIGSTART="EXEC PR_DbConfigStart 'test.txt', '10', 'DESCRIPTION' \nGO"

sed '1i\
$DBCONFIGSTART ' <test2.txt

producing this output

$DBCONFIGSTART
rest of file text.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can resolve this