Hello

I'd like to ask this question in the other way: Why does this work?

I'did the following:

Code:

perl -pi.bak -e "s/^CREATE(.*)$AS/CREATE$1WITH ENCRYTION \n/msg" FILE.TXT

This line peplaces

Code:

CREATE  VIEW ViewXYZ AS

with

Code:

CREATE  VIEW ViewXYZ WITH ENCRYTION AS

As i understand the regex, the 'AS' shouldn't be in the subtituted text, because in the second part of the regex (the replacement) 'AS' is missing.

First i tried with something like this:

Code:

s/CREATE(\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+)AS/CREATE$1WITH ENCRYTION\nAS/msg

Why this isn't working too?

This isn't the first time i run into trouble with multiline replacement, but every time i found a way to do it. But finally i like to know if there is a general error in my imagination of regex in multiline scenarios.


Thank You Very Much For Your Suggestions!

BTW: I'm Working with Active State Perl v5.8.2 on W2k, and Perl is acting the same if files are fomatted with unix or windows linebreaks.


Hi,

I don't have time to test right now, but from your first regex, it looks like the regex is stopping at the $ so the AS gets left out of the substitution.

And you may find some mileage in the 'm' modifier on the sub ( s///m ). This specifies that $ can match end of line within a string.
(Sorry, just noticed you are using 'm' already!!!)

Also you will probably have to unset $/ to make perl ignore the line breaks.

This may not be what you want to do though. Maybe your file is big ?

I'll have a read up and get back to you on this later.

B

I'm noticing that the original post was a one-liner with the Perl command on the command line and embedded in double quotes.  Now - I'm not a Windows expert, but on Linux and Unix that would cause a problem as the $AS would be treated as a shell variable.

I believe this is not the case here, because in windows the % sind indicates a env-var.

And in this man we have it too:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePerl/lib/Pod/perlwin32.html#usage_hints_for_perl_on_win32
See the last paragraph of 'Using perl from the command line'

But i've seen that if i use -w then the following warnig is generated:

Code:

Name "main::AS" used only once: possible typo at -e line 1.

So Perl threat this as var, witch explains the Error.


I tryed to unset the $/ and it worked! THANK YOU!

Now I'll stick with:

Code:

perl -w -pi.bak -e "undef $/; s/(CREATE\s+VIEW\s+\S+\s*)AS/$1WITH ENCRYPTION\nAS/msgi"

Thats the magic of Perl......

Just thought of something else looking at your original one-liner.  AFAICR  m// will interpolate variable names, so the $AS would look like a variable and would produce an error under 'use strict'.

B

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