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Insert Text With Sed

 
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# 1  
Old 02-08-2006
Insert Text With Sed
Hello. Trying to insert text at line 1 and after last line of file. I have searched posts but nothing seems to work. I keep getting extra characters error or nothing gets inserted into the file.

Code:
#!/bin/sh
touch textfile.txt
sed 'i\
Add this line before every line with WORD' textfile.txt

Help please. Thanks.
# 2  
Old 02-08-2006
textfile.txt is the input file. Why are you touching it? I would use:

line="stuff"
echo"$line"
cat textfile.txt
echo "$line"

But if you must use sed, use "1i" to insert a line before line 1. And "$a" to append a line after the last line.
# 3  
Old 02-08-2006
I was only touching file to create on the fly. I need to use sed. The '1i' and the 'i' in the format i posted does not work.
# 4  
Old 02-08-2006
Are you trying to insert to a new file having no lines ?
I think sed works if you have atleast one line in the file.
Create a file with atleast one line and try to insert/append/delete whatever
you want to do.
# 5  
Old 02-09-2006
See Oreilly's book to see how the inserting is done - 5.5 Append, Insert, and Change
# 6  
Old 02-09-2006
Thanks.

This worked. Somewhat.. I added atleast 1 line to testfile.txt. But in production i will need to create this line first before there is anything else. Is there a way to do this in the beginning without already having a line in the testfile.txt? Also, can I do this without splitting the command on 2 lines?

Code:
sed '1i\
ADD THIS LINE' testfile.txt

 
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