filename is: mime and looks like this: Mime-Version: 1.0 plain text Mime-Version: 1.0 Mime-Version: 1.0 sed '/Mime-Version: 1.0/{n;/^$/n;//s/^/=/;}' mime | sed -e :a -e '$!N;s/\n=/Content-Type\: text\/html\n/;ta' -e 'P;D' changes the file: mime to: Mime-Version: 1.0 plain text Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html