Replacing some text

[ianw1974]

OK, will have a look tomorrow and see if it works :)

[ianw1974]

Yes, the SA does appear after the 6 - 9 numbers, and that's what I was needing to accomplish. First, identify the 6 - 9 numbers, then replace the SA that follows.

 

As I mentioned earlier, a colleague managed to do it with perl, so it's not that important, but I expected sed could do it somehow. I'm just limited in my knowledge of sed to be able to complete it, and so was interested in how it might work.

 

I tried a combination of pauls with silversurfers:

 

sed 's/^*[0-9]{6,9}SA/-newsa-/ 1' < file > file2

 

find the numbers from 6 - 9 in length, then locate the SA which follows, but it didn't work.