perl on the commandline

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


perl -ni.bak -e 's/\s+//g;' names
[download]

why doesn't this change/modify the file names? when I use the -p switch instead of -n it shows up fine but when I cat names nothing :(

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Re: perl on the commandline by blakem (Monsignor) on Aug 21, 2001 at 23:02 UTC
Have you read about the difference between -n and -p at perlrun? If you're still confused after reading the explanation there, come back and I'll walk you through it. -Blake	[reply]
Re: perl on the commandline by Cine (Friar) on Aug 21, 2001 at 23:11 UTC
The -p prints $_ after each line, while -n do not. So the two versions are almost the same (they will do the same): `perl -i.bak -ne 's/\s+//g;print' names perl -i.bak -pe 's/\s+//g;' names` [download] T I M T O W T D I	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: perl on the commandline by Anonymous Monk on Aug 21, 2001 at 23:31 UTC
the file doesnt get modified. I want perl to strip the white space from the file but it doesn't do it. beware im am in windows terminal	[reply]
Re3: perl on the commandline by Hofmator (Curate) on Aug 22, 2001 at 15:37 UTC
You are using single quotes, under windows you have to type the following: `perl -pi.bak -e "s/\s+//g" names` -- Hofmator	[reply] [d/l]