Re: Inplace editing, one liner, without a backup file?

if for some reason it's now * vs *.* that's the problem, or you can't just del *.bak at the end due to size constraints, you can loop in a batch file, working with one file at a time so there's never more than 1 .bak file present (the self-calling is because the FOR/DO only allows for running a single command):

REM foo.bat
@echo OFF
IF "%1" == "process" GOTO processFile
GOTO convertAll

:convertALL
FOR %%f IN (c:\temp\*.txt) DO CALL %0 process "%%f"
GOTO end

:processFile
  SET in=%2
  perl -p -i -e "s/change this/to this/g" %in%
  del %in%.bak
GOTO end

:end
[download]

Update: Oops. fixed the error in variable name in ":processFile" .. also took advantage of "%0" .. thanks ikegami!

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Re^2: Inplace editing, one liner, without a backup file? by tphyahoo (Vicar) on Aug 09, 2005 at 13:02 UTC
Seems extremely useful (more for the multi file replace than for the deletion of the bak files), but when I run it it just hangs.	[reply]
Re^3: Inplace editing, one liner, without a backup file? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Aug 09, 2005 at 13:31 UTC
He made a small error. He was using `%f%` where he needed to use `%in%`. ...or simply `%2`. Also, I changed `foo.bat` to `%0`. `@echo off IF "%1" == "process" GOTO processFile GOTO convertAll :convertALL FOR %%f IN (c:\temp\.txt) DO CALL %0 process "%%f" GOTO end :processFile perl -p -i.bak -e "s/change this/to this/g" %2 del %2.bak GOTO end :end` [download] If you really wanted to name the parameter, try the following. It cleans up the environment as a bonus (by spawning another shell where `CALL` was formerly used). `@echo off IF "%1" == "process" GOTO processFile GOTO convertAll :convertALL FOR %%f IN (c:\temp\.txt) DO cmd /c %0 process "%%f" GOTO end :processFile SET IN=%2 perl -p -i.bak -e "s/change this/to this/g" %IN% del %IN%.bak GOTO end :end` [download] </c>	[reply] [d/l] [select]