Re: search and replace strings in different files in a directory

Hi,

have a look at perldoc perlrun to see some ways of calling Perl to do some very convenient tasks on the command line.

In your case I'm pretty sure you can do your annoying job with:

perl -pi.bak -e 's{&}{&amp;}g; s{&amp;amp;}{&amp;}g; s{\s>\s}{&gt;}g; 
+s{\s<\s}{&lt;}g;' *.xml
[download]

Regards
McA

Comment on Re: search and replace strings in different files in a directory Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: search and replace strings in different files in a directory by PitifulProgrammer (Acolyte) on Aug 13, 2014 at 10:51 UTC
Dear McA, Thanks a mil for your help with command line editing and sorry for not saying thanks a wee bit earlier. The script ran smoothly and did everything as expected. However, I've been running the script via cygwin and was wondering if I could just transform it into a batch file (for all those who do not use cygwin). I am a bit concerned if *.xml would be interpreted correctly by a WIN/DOS system. Thanks a mil again for the cmd-solution. Looking forward to your reply Kind regards C.	[reply]
Re^3: search and replace strings in different files in a directory by afoken (Chancellor) on Aug 14, 2014 at 19:16 UTC
I am a bit concerned if *.xml would be interpreted correctly by a WIN/DOS system. Good point. DOS, Windows and OS/2 leave resolving wildcards to the application, whereas Unix and friends resolve wildcards in the shell. (See also Re^3: Perl Rename.) Luckily, someone has already taken care of this: Win32::Autoglob. Win32::Autoglob also "just works" (by doing nothing) on other platforms than Windows. (Unfortunately, this means Win32::Autoglob does NOT work as expected for DOS and OS/2, but as both platforms went the way of the dodo, this does not harm many people.) Alexander -- Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)	[reply]