cfajohnson ,, Thanks for ur reply .. I just tested the reassignment of the variable and it works great. But please remember , I have to print everything after the hostname until the occurence of the next host name on a new line. You reply does not address my question in full though is very useful ...So the output should be.

my input is assigned to variable i is as follow :
hostname1: text goes here hostname2: text goes here hostname3: text goes here

The output should be:
hostname1 text here
hostname2 text here
hostname3 text here

---------- Post updated at 03:04 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:01 PM ----------

Ravindersingh13 - Thanks for ur reply .. I appreciate the perl command. But I won;t be able to use it in this script. I need to use the shell command to do this. Can you help with a shell command:

my input is assigned to variable i is as follow :
hostname1: text goes here hostname2: text goes here hostname3: text goes here

The output should be:
hostname1 text here
hostname2 text here
hostname3 text here