I have a problem, simple, but, I'm a newbie, hence, finding it difficult:

I would like to change text, within multiple files.
eg
replace text "audio/audio.html" inside a file

with ...

directory name/filename.html

eg

when a file is found in xx/yy.html (file called yy.html, in the directory
called xx)
then replace text within it, from
"audio/audio.html" to "xx/yy.html"

If you can help, I'd be very grateful.




A surprisingly common requirement in Perl - to go through all the files in a directory and replace all occurrences of one string in all files with a particular extension with another string.    Here's a sample program that does it:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl print "Directory path? "; chop ($dp = <STDIN>); print "File extension? "; chop ($fe = <STDIN>); print "Replace: "; chop ($togo = <STDIN>); print "By: "; chop ($tobecome = <STDIN>); opendir (DH,$dp) or die "Can't access directory\n"; while ($olditem = $item = readdir DH) {        if ($item !~ /\.$fe$/) {                print "Skipping $item\n";                next;                }        $olditem =~ s/\.$fe$/.bak/;        rename "$dp/$item","$dp/$olditem";        open (FHI,"$dp/$olditem");        open (FHO,">$dp/$item");        read(FHI,$buffer,-s "$dp/$olditem");        $count = ($buffer =~ s/$togo/$tobecome/g);        print (($count+0)." changes to file $item\n");        print FHO $buffer;        }

and the result from a sample run ....

Code:

[Graham-Elliss-Computer:~/dec03] graham% perl multi_edit Directory path? demo File extension? html Replace: and By: & Skipping . Skipping .. Skipping bits.php4 Skipping ctown.php4 Skipping demopic.jpg Skipping index.php4 Skipping page.bak 1 changes to file page.html Skipping secdo.php4 Skipping sh.php4 Skipping sheep.jpg Skipping T243.bak 56 changes to file T243.html Skipping tab.bak 0 changes to file tab.html Skipping upload.php4 Skipping WHC.css [Graham-Elliss-Computer:~/dec03] graham%

Note that this example
a) does not decend into subdirectories
b) Uses full perl regular expressions for the string to be replaced
c) Takes a backup copy of each file being potentially changed
d) Gives a verbose report which could easily be shortened
e) Is designed to be fast on lots of small files; won't work on huge files that are too big to be loaded into memory in a single read

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