Can it not be as simple as

s{abc(\d+)\.html}{sprintf("abc%04d.html",$1)}ge;
[download]

if all the filenames are of the form abc\d+.html or is there a catch?

I doubt "abc" was as literal as you interpreted it to be.

- tye        

Greetings, and thank you for your thoughtful replies.
Actually "abc" is a constant -- all the files in question are prefaced with those same 3 characters.
So in an effort to be more concise;
I need all the files prefaced by abc, to be followed by 4 digits.
The files abc1000.html through abc9000.html, are already there.
Which leaves abc1.html through abc999.html.
I was able to rename all the files by cobbling up a script with the help of
find(1),basename(1),cp(1), and rm(1) via for loop. But those won't help me with
the references to those files within all the files themselves. :(
So, in summary; how on earth can I append a 0 to abc
on all the references to abc100.html - abc999.html? Appending 2, or three
digits to the other references, will have the same solution. So I chose to use
the "hundreds" list for a starting point.

Thanks again for your thoughtful responses.



#!/usr/bin/perl -Tw
use perl::always;
my $perl_version = "5.12.4";
print $perl_version;

s{(?<=[a-z])([0-9]{1,3})(?=[.])}{
    sprintf "%04d", $1
}ge;
[download]

#!/usr/bin/perl -Tw
use perl::always;
my $perl_version = "5.12.4";
print $perl_version;