Replacing text in a file from a list in another file?

Question

I asked this question before but don\'t think I really explained it properly based on the answers given.

I have a file named backup.xml that is 28,000 l

Answer 1

How about this:

awk '{print NR-1 ",/\\*\\*\\*/{s/\\*\\*\\*/" $0 "/}"}' list.txt > list.sed
sed -f list.sed backup.xml

The first line used awk to make a list of search/replace commands based on the list, which is then executed on the next line via sed.