Using Perl to create PHP. I love it! :)

It's not that you're "not doing that part right".
It's simply that you're "not doing that part".
You never write out your changes.

while ( my $html_file = $rule->match ) {
   # Change file in-place.
   local @ARGV = $html_file;     
   local $^I = '.bak';  # Or '' to avoid making backups.

   while (<>) {
      ...

      # Keep (possibly edited) line
      print;
   }
}
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If you want something less magical,

while ( my $html_file = $rule->match ) {
   rename($html_file, "$html_file.bak")    or die;
   open(my $fh_in,  '<', "$html_file.bak") or die;
   open(my $fh_out, '>', $html_file)       or die;

   while (<$fh_in>) {
      ...

      # Keep (possibly edited) line
      print $fh_in $_;
   }
}
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Let me see how much I misunderstand the "less magical" code:

rename($html_file, "$html_file.bak")    or die;
Makes a copy of the file with the .bak extension

open(my $fh_in,  '<', "$html_file.bak") or die;
Opens the copy of the file for reading

open(my $fh_out, '>', $html_file) or die;
Opens the original file for writing, wiping out the contents?

    while (<$fh_in>) {
while there are file contents in the backup file, do something with them

      # Keep (possibly edited) line
      print $fh_in $_;
   }
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Print whatever the backup file is back into the backup file?

Ok, yeah, I still don't get this. I know I should, I've read enough examples, but I don't.
I read it as making a copy of the file I want to change, wiping out the contents of the original, modifying the copied file somehow and writing the modified text back into the copied file? Why am I not seeing this still?

Also, I don't get the while(<$fh_in>) { s/// } instead of using

my @lines = <$fh_in>;

    for (@lines) { s/// }
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because do I want to do the s/// on the entire file at once? Don't I want to go line by line?

As for the using Perl to write PHP, as ignorant as I may seem about Perl, I am continuously frustrated with moving into PHP. What I find is that the things that PHP does easier than Perl does not outweight the things that I could do easily in Perl that cannot do easily in PHP.

---

I learn more and more about less and less until eventually I know everything about nothing.

• rename renames, not copies.

• Oops! My error. I did
  print $fh_in $_;
  where I meant to do
  print $fh_out $_;

• Both
  my @lines = <$fh_in>; for (@lines) { s/// }
  and
  while(<$fh_in>) { s/// }
  work a line at a time. The only difference is that the top version needlessly keeps the entire file in memory.

  Entire file at once would be

  my $text; { local $/; $text = <$fh_in>; }
  $text =~ s///g;
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Ok, I studied the code some more and tested and tried and realized the < and > were reversed. This is what I've got now and it seems to work and I think I get it:

while ( my $html_file = $rule->match ) {
     
       rename($html_file, "$html_file.bak")    or die;
       open(my $fh_in,  '<', "$html_file.bak") or die;
       open(my $fh_out, '>', $html_file)       or die;
    
    while (<$fh_in>) {
        my @lines = <$fh_in>;

        for (@lines) {
            #replace <!--#include virtual="[document path]"-->
            #with <?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'[document p
+ath]'); ?>
                if (s/<!--#include virtual="(.*)"-->/<?php include(\$\
+_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'$1');?>/){
                 my $result = $1;
                 #print the file changed and the document path for the
+ included file
                 print OUTFILE "$html_file: $result\n";    
            }
        print $fh_out $_;
    }

    close($fh_in);
    close($fh_out);
}
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---

I learn more and more about less and less until eventually I know everything about nothing.

#!/bin/sh
for file in `find ./ -name '*.html'`; do 
perl -i.bak -ane "s/<!--#include virtual=\"(.*)\" *-->/<?php include(\
+\$\_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'\$1');?>/g; print;" $file
done
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#!/usr/bin/perl -w -i.bak -p
s/<!--#include virtual="(.*)"-->/<?php include(\$_SERVER[\'DOCUMENT_RO
+OT\'].\'$1'); ?>/g;
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One more, direct on command line. Use caution with these. Use them on a test copy if you can. They can cause accidents that can be hard to undo or end up snowballing with the smallest mistake.

# as one line
find . -regex '.*\.html$' -exec perl -pi.bk -e 's{<!--#include virtual
+="/ssi/([^"]+)"-->} {<?php\ninclude(\$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/ssi/
+\1.txt');\n?>}g' {} \;
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