Please help - I have seen others ask this question but I need a simple example of using vi in a shell script. Once I enter VI the shell script does not execute the next commands until I q!. I invoke VI and start the edit process. I want to go to the third line and replace a character with a new character and then :wq. There must be a special character set required to feed the script. Not sure how to get <esc> intol script, if I need it at all. A simple example would be great. Please type and reply. Thanks

Traditionally, vi is an interactive editor. I am hardpressed to imagine a situation where its functionality can not be replaced by sed -- the stream editor -- or a pipeline series of grep, awk, etc... I'd advise avoiding the vi solution though I'm sure it is possible.

Can you be more specific with your data? For example, are you always replacing a character on the third line only or is there a specific pattern that uniquely identifies that line?

Here is a simple example that replaces all lowercase 'e' characters with an uppercase 'E' on line 3 only. Given the following file:

You could then redirect the output to a temporary file, say file.tmp and then move it back to file.

Thanks for the SED. This should work well and achieve my goal.