John Doe wrote: > $ cat $FILE | tr "\n" " " | sed 's/ *></>\n</g' I was yearning for someone to chime with that! sed is clearly the best & most straightforward way to do this task. I can't help myself - there's a "useless use of cat": $ < $FILE tr "\n" " " | sed 's/ *></>\n</g' http://www.partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html#uucaletter -- "Pedantic, I?" -- Alexei Sayle