multi-line in-place edits

Tuppence has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello monks,

Having already replaced every \n in my source tree with \266 due to a bad command line, I need help with what I expected to be very simple.

I'm trying to run a multi-line search replace against a file from the command line.

Simplified, I want

perl -pi -e 's/(.*)/{\1}/gs' filename.txt

to put a { } wrapper around the entire file. Instead, it puts a { } wrapper around each line. (and some weird extra ones, but eh whatever)

I thought this could be solved with something like -l0666, but I can't find why I think that and it already toasted my code tree once...

Tuppence

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Re: multi-line in-place edits by cog (Parson) on Feb 15, 2005 at 19:05 UTC
This works: `perl -pi -e 'BEGIN{undef$/};s/(.*)/<$1>/s' filename.txt` A couple of notes: Use $1 instead of \1 (use \1 only in the left part of the substitution The /g switch fell off (you only wanted to do it once) And... I guess that's it... I undefined $/ so that the file would be read all at once :-) HTH	[reply] [d/l]
Re: multi-line in-place edits by bmann (Priest) on Feb 15, 2005 at 19:33 UTC
I thought this could be solved with something like -l0666, Take a look at perlrun, -0777 will slurp the entire file. Here's a working one-liner: `perl -i.bak -0777 -ne 'print "{$_}"' filename`Good luck!	[reply] [d/l]
Re: multi-line in-place edits by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Feb 15, 2005 at 19:38 UTC
`perl -n0777i.bak -e 'print "{$_}"' filename.txt` [download] The 0777 option does the same thing as the BEGIN that others are suggesting. See `perldoc perlrun`. Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: multi-line in-place edits by holli (Abbot) on Feb 15, 2005 at 19:36 UTC
`perl -0ni -e "print qq({$_})" file` holli, /regexed monk/	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: multi-line in-place edits by jsprat (Curate) on Feb 16, 2005 at 01:18 UTC
`perl -0ni -e "print qq({$_})" file` Caveat - this will fail quietly if the file contains any null bytes. -0 with no arguments sets the record separator to \0. Better to explicitly use -0777. This will cause perl to slurp the whole file, since "there is no legal byte with that value" (quoted from perlrun)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: multi-line in-place edits by sh1tn (Priest) on Feb 15, 2005 at 19:00 UTC
`perl -i -pe 's/(.+)/{$1}/' filename.txt` [download] Update: return of deleted errors ...	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: multi-line in-place edits by Tuppence (Pilgrim) on Feb 15, 2005 at 19:02 UTC
Yours wraps each line - I want the whole file wrapped. Although yours does get rid of the funny extra sets...	[reply]
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Re: multi-line in-place edits by halley (Prior) on Feb 15, 2005 at 19:23 UTC
I am not sure I understand the value of your task (or what you meant by adding \266 bytes). Are you trying to undo a command-line mistake? Are you trying to use some tool that avoids working inside braces, so you're wrapping the file in braces? It all sounds odd. This doesn't work, `perl -p -i -e 'BEGIN { print "{" } END { print "}" }' filename.txt` [download] but this does. Not as quick to type, but... `echo "{" >tmp cat filename.txt >>tmp echo "}" >>tmp mv tmp filename.txt` [download] -- `[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: multi-line in-place edits by Tuppence (Pilgrim) on Feb 15, 2005 at 20:08 UTC
I provided a simplified example to get the multi-line edit syntax worked out. I was attempting to do some code refactoring with in-place editing, when due to failing memory I replaced all the \n's with a upper ascii char. I managed to get that fixed, and just needed the correct syntax for multi line edits. `-l0666` is so close to the `-0777` that I really needed I think perl should have just known I was doing the wrong thing and Done the Right Thing ;) /joke	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: multi-line in-place edits by sh1tn (Priest) on Feb 15, 2005 at 20:43 UTC
`perl -pi -e '1 == $. and s/^/{/; eof and s/$/}/' file.txt` [download]	[reply] [d/l]


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