$ sed -i 's/red/blue/g' file to replace every entry called red with one that's called blue and write it in the file(-i). You can of course use such things as ./* for the hole directory.... man sed or man awk will provide you with further informations :) I have a long replacement text like this: <?php require('../../wp-blog-header.php'); ?><?php get_header(); ?><?php include(TEMPLATEPATH."/sidebar1.php");?><div id="main"><div id="content"> and the text that needs to be replaced is: <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Net Bible - Genesis </TITLE><LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="style.css" TYPE="text/css" MEDIA=screen></HEAD><body><p class=title> So the command i run looks like this; sed -i 's/<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Net Bible - Genesis </TITLE><LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="style.css" TYPE="text/css" MEDIA=screen></HEAD><body><p class=title>/<?php require('../../wp-blog-header.php'); ?><?php get_header(); ?><?php include(TEMPLATEPATH."/sidebar1.php");?><div id="main"><div id="content">/g' ./* and i get this error: sed: -e expression #1, char 99: unknown option to `s' -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org