Hi,

I have a file and i have to insert a line above a particular line in the file.
In the file the lines starts with dates and can have lines starting with repeated dates. I want to search(first occurence) for a line starting with particular date and insert a line above that line
Ex
sample.txt
-------------------------------
013008 .......
013008 .......
013108 .......
013108 .......
013008 .......
020108
020108 ........

Say i want to search for a line starting with 020108(first occurence ) and insert a line above it. Can you please give me the sed command for that
or perl onliner.

Thanks in advance
ammuu

This :

produces this output with your input above:

Is this what you're after ?

Thanks for replying
When I execute the command it is throwing an error
$sed '1,/020108/{//i\add this line} ' a.txt
sed: command garbled: 1,/020108/{//i\add this line}

I need to add a line which out creating any temp files

Thanks
Ammu

spacing/newlines are important - insert in sed is by default a multiline command.

i.e. follow the example exactly....not on one line...