From: ams AT ludd DOT luth DOT se (Martin Str|mberg)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Global file edit?
Date: 23 Jul 1999 23:44:53 GMT
Organization: University of Lulea, Sweden
Message-ID: <7naupl$j1i$1@news.luth.se>
References: <19990723 DOT 1942 DOT 13701snz AT roborat DOT demon DOT co DOT uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: queeg.ludd.luth.se
X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0]
Lines: 32
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Dave Scott (dave AT roborat DOT demon DOT co DOT uk) wrote:
: I've just spent several hours getting to grips with sed, find and xargs,
: and I realise I'm no closer to being able to do what it was I went
: looking for in the first place :-\
: 
: Is there a simple utility available to do something like this :-
: 
:    edit <existing_string> <replacement_string> <a_bunch_of_filespecs>
: 
: Say for instance I wanted to replace all existing calls in a project
: to malloc(), with calls to xmalloc() instead...
:    "edit malloc xmalloc *.c *.cpp"
: which would make the changes in all the affected files, and ideally
: retain the original files renamed with .bak extensions (or similar).
: 
: The only way I can do anything like that at present is to redirect the
: output of a grep into a file, and out of that manually create a batch
: file (involving lots of separate calls to sed and rename).
: 
: There must be an easier way?

Perl to the rescue!!!

perl -i.bak -ne 's/malloc/xmalloc/g; print' *.c *.cpp

Note that this _will_ replace "xmalloc" with "xxmalloc", so don't run
it twice (without moving back the .bak files).


Right,

							MartinS