Keep in mind that modern versions of Perl added some extra goodies to the -i value (from
perlrun):
If the extension doesn't contain a "*", then it is appende
+d to the
end of the current filename as a suffix. If the extension
+ does
contain one or more "*" characters, then each "*" is repla
+ced with
the current filename. In Perl terms, you could think of t
+his as:
($backup = $extension) =~ s/\*/$file_name/g;
This allows you to add a prefix to the backup file, instea
+d of (or
in addition to) a suffix:
$ perl -pi'orig_*' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup t
+o 'orig_fileA'
Or even to place backup copies of the original files into
+another
directory (provided the directory already exists):
$ perl -pi'old/*.orig' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup
+to 'old/fileA.orig'