I think I'm just down to the regular expression I need to find the line in the hosts file. I am bound by the modules already implemented within the Perl build on the laptops which does not include Regex so I can't use $RE{net}{IPv4}. In the following segment of the script I have the expression to verify that there are four :

if( $vmServerIP =~ m/^(\d\d?\d?)\.(\d\d?\d?)\.(\d\d?\d?)\.(\d\d?\d?)/ 
+){
    if($1 <= 255 && $2 <= 255 && $3 <= 255 && $4 <= 255){
      open (my $oldhfile, ,'<', $hfilepath) or die "Could not open $hf
+ilepath for reading.";
      my @hfile = <$oldhfile>;
#
# read each line to find the lines that lead with an IP address
# and then find the line with HOSTNAME in it and replace that IP
# address with the provided one
#

      foreach $hfileline (@hfile) {
           next unless $hfileline =~/^\s*\s+$hNames/;
           $hfileline = "$vmServerIP       $hNames\n";            
      }

[download]

I'm pretty sure that the validation of the format of the octets is working correctly. However, I'm having issues with formulating the regular expression in the foreach loop if anyone could provide me with some guidance.

-nas

In reply to update winxp hosts file with new IP address by notasaint

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.