Thanks for reply, I tried what you said and I get error: invalid option --i

Any idea what I might be doing wrong? I tried it on command line and in a file I made with cat then executed with 'sh'

Thanks

Mike

Probably using an ancient sed ... in that case try

Cheers,
Tink

Hey Tink, Thanks again.

I am at work at the moment so I havent got a shell handy. I took a look into iserting with sed using options "i" and "a" and found "i" appends before the line and "a" after the line, this should mean I can use the same script with '1i\ in my first script as well as in this one.

what does "#!/bin/sh" actually tell the shell at the start of the script? just so I know for future reference.

Thanks

Mike

What a shame - you work in the wrong place! ;}

If a text-file is marked executable and has a
#!/path/to/executable
in it the bash will try to use the executable in there
to run the rest of the file as a script .

Normally you'd have to invoke a script (if it didn't
have the line) e.g. like
sh my_script
instead of just
./my_script


Cheers,
Tink

^^ Tell me about it.. I work in retail and I am not even supposed to use the Internet but only the companys Intranet, I want out of this job so bad, thats why I am here trying to learn UNIX, I want to become a Java programmer and need to learn UNIX and SQL before the training company will learn me Java.

Mike

Good on yah.

Sorry, can't resist that one; it's "will teach me Java",
learn is what you do, teach is what they do ;}


Cheers,
Tink

Hehe, reminds me of my english teacher when people use to ask to lend a ruler rather than borrow :)

I tried the script and still get the invalid option --i. I thought it might have been the shell I
was using which is part of the "putty" program which I use through my windows account, I then logged into my Mandriva Korn shell and got the same kind of trouble, in Mandriva I get this

sed: -e expression #1 char 10: unknown command `m'

my script was run from a file saved in cat as follow:

#!/bin/sh
sed '2i\
add me to the middle'
myfile > myfile.tmp
mv myfile.tmp myfile


Thanks

Mike

Aye - English is quite a neat and rich language, and it makes
me cringe to see the natives butcher it like that ;}

We have a shop call Mr Rentals here where you can hire all
kinds of appliances (dish-washers, TV sets, ... ) ... they recently
added PC hardware to their repertoire, and the new add says
"Mr Rentals now rents computers!". I was so tempted to ask them
how much a day they'd pay for my athlon. ;}

That's a weird error message to get there; the script IS faulty, but it
shouldn't run to completion.

You need to either a) join these lines
to look like
or b) add a backslash to the first one (like so)

Cheers,
Tink

Hi again.

I tried the ways you mentioned but still dont get the desired results, I am on the part of the course which covers sed and grep etc and it say the following syntax should be used with sed:

sed [-n][-e]'command' file(s)

and command being as : [address]i\text //to insert

which is basically what you showed me and what I have tried to do. I tried this on the command line which as far as I can see follows the above syntax:

sed -e '2i\put me in the middle' myfile
also this
sed '2i\put me in the middle' myfile
and this
sed -e '2i\put me in the middle\'myfile
and this
sed -e '2i\put me in the middle' > myfile

as well as using sh to execute my script after writing it in cat. One of the errors I am getting now is:

sed -e expression #1, char 4: extra characters after command

Anyone got any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Thanks for looking

Mike

whooo hooo!!

I managed to figure this out, I found a guide on the IBM website and with what I have learned from this thread I came up with this script:

echo '2i\
This is the line I have been trying to insert for ages' > tempfile
sed -f tempfile myfile
rm tempfile


and bingo it works, thanks to all who helped and many thanks to Tinkster the human grammar and syntax compiler who is watching your every sentence - so beware! thanks mate, would have gave up long ago if it wasnt for your help:)

Mike

Well, I'm glad it works in the end, but I still don't understand
why it doesn't do the version I posted. It's perfectly sane, and
works on three different distros (SLES9, Debian Sarge and Slack 10.2)
I can get my paws on the moment, plus in solaris 10 and 8 :}

What distro are you using again, with which version of sed?


Cheers,
Tink

Hi, I have windows on one partition and Mandriva on the other, although I tried early on with Mandriva I have been using a program (as recommended by the Academy) called "Putty" through my windows account, the Academy uses Suse on there servers. Putty is a telnet/ssh client and I use it to connect to the academys servers. In manual it says "sed(1) 1998" which I would figure is probably and old version.

Thanks again

Mike

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Hi Mike ...

OK, now my last question :)

I assume that you're copying & pasting from a winDOHs
browser to the linux box via putty?

In that case, the screwed-up error message may well
stem from the DOS CR/LF combos :}

In the ssh session try "dos2unix your_script" with the
original content, and then run it again.

I have that idea that the ^M DOS files will have on each
end of a line may be confusing sed ;}


Cheers,
Tink

Yo, Nope I am just using the good ol' keyboard, the shell has a fit when I tried to cut and paste. I will try what you said when I get back home though, I can't understand what I was doing wrong either, every guide on sed I found basically operated as you suggested but on the IBM site they recommended a script file that you would call with the -f option, even the academy tutorials were the same as you explained and I couldnt get them to work either.

ta
Mike