changing inside a file

[amoura]

Hi ,, I have a tree of files I am trying to go inside each one and change one word from old to new somthing like :

while files 
{
open (firstFile, " c:/file")or die;
if ( $_ eq " old " )
$_ = " new ";
}

so I got the logic but how do I open the directory containg these files and its subfiles and start reading each file at the time knowing that some files have subfiles which need to be changed as well ,, thanks

[waswas-fng]

find . -name "*.html" -exec perl -pi -e's/ old / new /' {} \;;

-Waswas

[amoura]

this seems to work but I get this error

Can't do inplace edit without backup.

[waswas-fng]

find . -name "*.html" -exec perl -pi.bak -e's/ old / new /' {} \; ; This will put a <filename>.bak backup file in place for every file that gets updated.. you must be using Activestate perl huh? mine allows inplace without a backup..

-Waswas

[derby]

checking out File::Find would be a good start. That way you don't have to worry about recursing the directory structure yourself.

-derby

[bart]

Somehow I have the feeling that the standard solutions, like te ones proposed here, don't really apply to your problem. I guess that you're actually trying to process in include-like tree, where some lines in a file point to other files, which you want to include as well... Am I right?

In that case, I would think somewhat in this direction:

my @todo = glob('c:/*.inc');  # some kind of file
my %done;
undef $/;
while(@todo) {
    my $file = shift @todo;
    open FILE, "+<$file" or die "Can't open file $file: $!";
    $_ = <FILE>; # whole contents of file
    if(s/\bold\b/new/g) {
        # replace contents of file
        seek FILE, 0, 0;
        truncate FILE, 0;
        print FILE;
    }
    my($dir) = $file =~ m[(.*/)];
    while(/^#include (\S+);/mg) {
        push @todo, "$dir$1" unless $done{"$dir$1"}++;
    }
}

But I must admit that I haven't actually put this to a test, I only made sure it compiles. It's just to give you some ideas.

[amoura]

;) nice ,, thanks

[screamingeagle]

File::Recurse might be another option...