From: "Erwin S. Andreasen" On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, Richard Daugherty wrote: > I want to change all the vnums i have in an area so i can use it on my > mud. I tried to do tr 6641 1701 < area.are tr translates one character set into another, e,g. translate each of abcd into ABCD, so a -> A, etc. Use perl: perl -pi~ -e 's/66(\d\d)/17\1/g' file.are To substitute all sequences of 66 followed by two digits to 17 followed by those two digits. This will modify file.are but leave a backup in file.are~ -p - print each line in the file -i~ - modify in place, leave backup in ~ -e - the whole script follows on command line s/X/Y/Z substitute X whenever you see it with Y, using options Z 66(\d\d) - substitute 66 followed by two digits (\d\d) - the parens group the two digits so perl will remember them 17\1 - substitute with 17 and the first parenthized thing in search pattern, i.e. the last two digits g - substitute globally, i.e. not just once on each line. Go buy a Perl book. Preferrably one written by Larry Wall, so he can the money he well deserves for writing Perl :) ============================================================================== Erwin Andreasen Herlev, Denmark UNIX System Programmer <*> (not speaking for) DDE ==============================================================================