i command in sed - only one address?

[Geoff Clare]

ceblair at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Charles Blair) writes:
|    I would like to put a line before ranges in a file.  Something like
| 
| sed '/A/,/B/i\
| INSERTED LINE' < file1 > file2
| 
| but when I try this, I get an error message saying ``only one address.''

jik at athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes:

>  Because, as sed is pointing out, the 'i' command only takes one address. 
>You need to loop through the lines in the region, inserting the text before
>each of them.  Something like this:

>/A/{
>	:loop
>	i\
>INSERTED LINE
>	/B/b
>	n
>	b loop
>}

There's a much simpler way:

sed '/A/,/B/{
i\
INSERTED LINE
}' < file1 > file2

-- 
Geoff Clare <gwc at root.co.uk>  (Dumb American mailers: ...!uunet!root.co.uk!gwc)
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