Shell Programming and Scripting

but this is what smith requires, he wants to change it without opening ,

He probably didn't want to replace it either, then.

You cannot edit a file without opening it. Something, somewhere has to open it.

When I meant not opening, I meant about opening manually doing a nano or a vi and replacing stuff. Sorry for any confusion.

As others have pointed out, you cannot edit a file without opening the file. If all you want to do is replace or insert or insert a single line, the simplest and quickest way would be to do it the old way and use ed. If it needs scripting, just put the ed commands in a here document. If you cannot work ed there has to be a problem.


Comments:

Not clear why this is posted in scripting when only two files are mentioned.

I too cannot see why one would want to use awk for basic text editing.

Be wary of the naive sed substitute suggestion because could change lines lines other than the first line. A sed swapping the complete line is safer providing that it is the only line in the file which matches.

Thanks methyl. I was learning awk since a little while. So, wanted to know how to do it. I knew sed is lot more easier for basic text editing. But, wanted to see how awk does it. Your time is appreciated.