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Modify Specific Line of a Text File

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# 1  
Old 02-12-2009
Modify Specific Line of a Text File
Given a text file, how do you add a line of text after a specific line number? I believe I would want to use "sed" but I am unsure of the syntax. Thank you.

Mike
# 2  
Old 02-12-2009
suppose you want to add "hi there" between lines 2 & 3
Code:
sed '3i\
hi there' oldfile > newfile

after the \ there must a be a new line
# 3  
Old 02-12-2009
Him Jim,

I really appreciate your response. The code you provided isn't doing quite what I would like. I have a text file called original.txt:

Code:
MIke$ cat original.txt 
blah
blah
blah
blah
blah
MIke$ sed '3i\
> hi there' original.txt > new.txt
MIke$ cat new.txt 
blah
blah
hi thereblah
blah
blah

I would like the output to be:
blah
blah
hi there
blah
blah
blah

Is there a way I can do that? Thanks again.

Mike
# 4  
Old 02-12-2009
Code:
sed '3i\
hi there
' original.txt > new.txt

OR

sed "$(printf "3i%c\nhi there\n" '\')"  original.txt > new.txt

# 5  
Old 02-12-2009
Yes thank you very much. That works. Is there any way those commands could be combined into one line? For example:

sed '3i\; hi there;' original.txt > new.txt

That doesn't work but perhaps there is something similar? Thank you very much.

Mike
# 6  
Old 02-12-2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by msb65
Yes thank you very much. That works. Is there any way those commands could be combined into one line? For example:

sed '3i\; hi there;' original.txt > new.txt

That doesn't work but perhaps there is something similar? Thank you very much.

Mike
The second option is a one-liner.
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