Bash has built-in substitution. For simple tasks it’s easier than piping through sed: text="hello world" echo ${text/hello/ohayou} # prints ohayou world Be aware that just the first word is changed: text="hello world hello" echo ${text/hello/ohayou} # prints ohayou world hello To change all instances of a world, prepend the search pattern with another slash: text="hello world hello" echo ${text//hello/ohayou} # prints ohayou world ohayou Notice there are two slashes before hello, one as the separator and one prepending it.