sed "7 s/^[^B].*/\n&/" did the trick, very nicely, thanks to a gent from Germany in another venue.
On Mar 10, 1:16 pm, John Bartley K7AAY <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Kinda terse, yeah.. Here's what I hope you can help me with. > > I have a series of hundreds of small (10-15 line) text files. > > I need to check line 7. > If it does NOT begin with B, insert a newline. > > If it does begin with B, don't do anything. > > awk "NR==7 && substr($0,1,1)!="B" {print""} " %1.b > was suggested (elsewhere) but that duplicates line 7 instead of just > stuffing in a newline. > > I've tried multiple variations on sed "7,1 s/" to no avail. > > Help me, Obi Wan-Kenobi, you're my only hope. > > Thank you kindly.