Ued has a quirk in the global command which turns out to be of use. Create a file full of file-names, pip taco=/br , then remove any headings so that only the list exists. Then enter the following commands (s=substitute) g/./.k..k. ;makes 2 copies, -> every line is now 3 g//+s/.*/"&"/+s/.*/(&)/ ;this ends up with: file1 "file1" (file1) file2 "file2" (file2) file3 "file3" (file3) This example may be reduced to every other line, or increased to more than 3 lines. The bug is that any line globally selected as dot and having a substitute "up the line" removes the line substituted from the global list. Thus the next 2 lines get skipped during the execution of the global. If you experiment with various types you can get pretty wierd but sometimes interesting results. see ued2 for additional info.