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

Hi ,, I have a tree of files I am trying to go inside each one and change one word from old to new somthing like : 
while files 
{
open (firstFile, " c:/file")or die;
if ( $_ eq " old " )
$_ = " new ";
}

[download]
so I got the logic but how do I open the directory containg these files and its subfiles and start reading each file at the time knowing that some files have subfiles which need to be changed as well ,, thanks

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: changing inside a file
by waswas-fng (Curate) on Aug 26, 2002 at 17:01 UTC
    find . -name "*.html" -exec perl -pi -e's/ old / new /' {} \;;

    -Waswas
[reply]
[d/l]
      this seems to work but I get this error 
      Can't do inplace edit without backup.

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
        find . -name "*.html" -exec perl -pi.bak -e's/ old / new /' {} \; ; This will put a <filename>.bak backup file in place for every file that gets updated.. you must be using Activestate perl huh? mine allows inplace without a backup..

        -Waswas
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: changing inside a file
by derby (Abbot) on Aug 26, 2002 at 16:47 UTC
    checking out File::Find would be a good start. That way you don't have to worry about recursing the directory structure yourself.

    -derby

[reply]
Re: changing inside a file
by bart (Canon) on Aug 26, 2002 at 18:58 UTC
    Somehow I have the feeling that the standard solutions, like te ones proposed here, don't really apply to your problem. I guess that you're actually trying to process in include-like tree, where some lines in a file point to other files, which you want to include as well... Am I right?

    In that case, I would think somewhat in this direction: 

    my @todo = glob('c:/*.inc');  # some kind of file
my %done;
undef $/;
while(@todo) {
    my $file = shift @todo;
    open FILE, "+<$file" or die "Can't open file $file: $!";
    $_ = <FILE>; # whole contents of file
    if(s/\bold\b/new/g) {
        # replace contents of file
        seek FILE, 0, 0;
        truncate FILE, 0;
        print FILE;
    }
    my($dir) = $file =~ m[(.*/)];
    while(/^#include (\S+);/mg) {
        push @todo, "$dir$1" unless $done{"$dir$1"}++;
    }
}

    [download]
    But I must admit that I haven't actually put this to a test, I only made sure it compiles. It's just to give you some ideas.
[reply]
[d/l]
      ;) nice ,, thanks
[reply]
Re: changing inside a file
by screamingeagle (Curate) on Aug 26, 2002 at 16:54 UTC
    File::Recurse might be another option...
[reply]

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