Question

What sed command would allow me to append one string to the end of every line, a different string to the start of the first line, and a different string to the end of the fifth line?

So far I have

    sed 's/$/<br>/' $FILE1 >> $FILE1_GETS_APPENDED_TO_THIS_FILE

to append a html break statement to the end of each line in the file1. I need to add a header statement around the first 5 lines though. Therefore, the start of the first line needs to have <h3> appended to it and the end of the fifth line needs </h3> appened to it.

Thanks!

Answer 1

It’s that easy:

sed 's/$/<br>/; 1 s/^/<h3>/; 5 s/$/<\/h3>/'

As you use $ to match the end of the line, use ^ to match the start of the line.

Then, for each of your commands (such as s), you can specify a line number (or range) where it should apply.