you are right, sed or awk are good and would do that nicely The advantage of Perl is investing a little time in learing some (not all) Perl 5 (not Perl 3 or 4,

you are right, sed or awk are good and would do that nicely The advantage of Perl is investing a little time in learing some (not all) Perl 5 (not Perl 3 or 4, those are only a bit better than BASH + sed + awk) allows you to do a lot more than you can with BASH + sed + awk.