Edit files in-place using a single regex (regular expression) that will be applied to the entire file as a string. Useful for applying multiline regexes and avoiding shell redirection and backup files. Also, quite dangerous!
Please let me know if there is are easier/more elegant ways to do this, especially as a one-liner. When making suggestions, please keep in mind that my goals were to provide:
complete power of search and replace with Perl regexes
in-place file editing on multiple files
This script is mainly for Perl-savvy users or those familiar with Perl-compatible regular expressions.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
+
use Getopt::Declare;
# $Id: multiline_inplace_edit.pl,v 1.5 2003/08/07 00:44:02 adamm Exp $
our $VERSION = 0.01;
our $usage_spec = <<'UsageSpec';
[strict]
Edit files in-place using a single regex that will be applied to
the entire file as a string.
<regex> regex to be applied to files
[required]
<files>... one or more files to slurp in and run regex ag
+ainst
[required]
WARNING: the first argument is added to an eval block!
Example:
./edit.pl 's/your([\n\s]*?)friend/joe${1}${2}/ms' foo.txt
UsageSpec
our $args = new Getopt::Declare ($usage_spec) or die;
local $/;
for (@{$args->{'<files>'}}) {
open (FH, "< $_") or die "error opening $_ for reading: $!";
my $whole_file = <FH>;
my $matching_code = '{ $whole_file =~ ' . $args->{'<regex>'} . ' }';
eval $matching_code;
die $@ if $@;
close(FH) or die "error closing $!";
open (FH, "> $_") or die "error opening $_ for writing: $!";
print FH $whole_file;
close(FH) or warn "error closing $!";
}
