Final Update: this is what I used in the end...

Parses a string in a file. The string uses an apostrophe as line terminator. Ignores apostrophes predeeded by the escape character, "?". Clever enough not to parse the same file more than once.

perl -p -i.bak -e "s/([^?])'([^\n])/$1'\n$2/g" input.txt

  • perl: Invokes the command interpreter.
  • -p: p switch is 'assume loop like -n but print line also'.
  • -i.bak: i switch is edit in place, .bak is the extension of the backup file.
  • -e: e switch is 'one line of program'.
  • "...": Use double quotes for Windows OS.
  • s/.../.../g: Substitute. Match 1st and substitute 2nd. g means global.
  • (...)...(...): Groups - whatever the value between brackets winds up in $1, $2 etc.
  • ([^?])'([^\n]): Match any apostrophes neither preceeded by the escape character "?" nor followed by a new line "\n" - three characters total.
  • $1'\n$2: Replace matches with the value of group one (see above) followed by an apostrophe and a new line(\n) and the value of group two - four characters total.
  • input.txt: File to parse.

    In reply to Re^2: Simple Substitution by winter67uk
    in thread Simple Substitution by winter67uk

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