sed With the last g all text is replaced not just the first Replace text inline using sed (does not work with symlinks) sed -i 's/TO_BE_REPLACED/NEW_TEXT/g' FILE_HERE Replace text output to stdout sed 's/TO_BE_REPLACED/NEW_TEXT/g' FILE_HERE awk Show specific column of line awk '{ print $N }' where N is column number cut cut -d' ' -fN where d is the delimiter and N is the colum number perl Replace new line with space