Thanks for your help guys, It doesnt seem to work..I forgot to mention that the files have more than one line in them so ill need to just edit the one line and leave the rest intact it seems to be deleting all of them.. This is the input i am getting from a html form : $INPUT{'id'} $INPUT{'title'} $INPUT{'description'} This is the format in the file $INPUT{'id'}|$INPUT{'title'}|$INPUT{'description'}"; I want to edit the line with the id they supply to update the title and description.. im very stuck :( any help would be really appreciated, thanks.