alright i feel crappy askin for more help, but ive read all the man pages i can take, and im still left with some difficulties. I know i should either use sed or awk or maybe even vi, but can anyone help me out some of those to scane a file (.profile) for a line and then rewrite that whole line? an example would be to add a new printer or something, in the .profile would be a line say like "printerdest=" and after that line could be xxxxxx or whatever, i want vi awk or sed to scan the file for "printerdest=" and replace it with what im specifying in the script. is there a specific command in awk or sed that im not seeing? help or guidance would be much appreciated. thanks.