Re^2: binary edit

[pbyfire]

Thank you for the rapid reply, unfortunately the example(s) did not work for me. It left the outfile empty. The only way I can see the string to be replaced is with a hex editor.

I am working on a *nix system and use vi all day long and I can only see the hex value and the ascii value of the string in vi calling xxd.

[dave_the_m]

replace the -nle with -pe and it should work

Dave.

[johngg]

Tested using -pe rather than -nle as the -p flag does an implicit print whereas -n does not.

knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ perl -E '$str .= chr int rand 256 for 1 .. 100
+00; print $str; substr $str, 4809, 10, q{P200000976}^C> xxxxx
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ perl -E '
> $str .= chr int rand 256 for 1 .. 10000;
> substr $str, 4809, 10, q{P200000976};
> print $str;' > orig
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ hexdump -C orig | egrep '12[cd]0'
000012c0  29 72 ff 9b 1d bf 35 39  3d 50 32 30 30 30 30 30  |)rÿ..¿59=
+P200000|
000012d0  39 37 36 43 4c 6d 90 9e  07 03 bb 42 32 c9 b5 ff  |976CLm...
+.»B2ɵÿ|
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ perl -pe 's{P200000976}{Test123456}' < orig > 
+modified
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ hexdump -C modified | egrep '12[cd]0'
000012c0  29 72 ff 9b 1d bf 35 39  3d 54 65 73 74 31 32 33  |)rÿ..¿59=
+Test123|
000012d0  34 35 36 43 4c 6d 90 9e  07 03 bb 42 32 c9 b5 ff  |456CLm...
+.»B2ɵÿ|
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$

[pbyfire]

Thanks JohnGG that worked quite well. You were right I am trying too hard and now you know why I joined perlmonks with the username pbyfire - from bash to perl on the job makes one research more and learn faster out of necessity and you have saved me from wasting more time.

PBYFIRE

Oops...My apologies since Dave deserves to share in my thanks for providing the solution as well. - Thanks Dave