Adding xvnc to .xsession

[uggla]

Is there a simple way to substitute the first line in a text file? (Googled echo, cat, tail and sed but got only confused).

[danielibarnes]

Is there a simple way to substitute the first line in a text file? (Googled echo, cat, tail and sed but got only confused).

sed '1s/^/inserted-text\n/' -i /home/tc/.xsession

[uggla]

That wasn't quite right. This worked though:
sed -e '1d' -e '2i\newtext' -i /home/tc/.xsession

[danielibarnes]

My reply was based on the snippet I tested with busybox sed:
tc@box:~$ seq 1 3|sed '1s/^/first\n/'
first
1
2
3
A different sed might give you different results.

[uggla]

I got the same result but I wanted to substitute the first line, not add a new one.

[maro]

Whilst a "delete first line and insert before the second" approach (as mentioned in reply #17) should work I wonder why you don't just substitute the entire line (via a 's/^.*$/replacemnet text/' expression).

Or along the lines of the formerly shown example:

Code: [Select]

tc@box:~$ seq 1 3 | sed '1s#^.*$#first#'
first
2
3

BTW, a few good links related to SED are mentioned here.

[danielibarnes]

I got the same result but I wanted to substitute the first line, not add a new one.

Sorry, I see that now. I did not read your question clearly.

[uggla]

Thanks anyway, you pointed me in the right direction.