Re: how do I swap 2 strings in a file?

Why don't you try this to switch the strings. It doesn't involve a regex, and is easier to follow:

while(<ORIG>){
if    ($_ eq $string_1) {$string .= $string_2; next;}
elsif ($_ eq $string_2) {$string .= $string_1; next;}
$string.= $_;
}
[download]

The 15 year old, freshman programmer,
Stephen Rawls

Comment on Re: how do I swap 2 strings in a file? Download Code

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Re: Re: how do I swap 2 strings in a file? by TGI (Parson) on May 09, 2001 at 20:45 UTC
I don't think this will work. This assumes that the string to replace takes up a whole line (or chunk based on whatever you've got $/ set to). If the file looks like this: 1221323asdl;lerTHIS IS THE STRING I WANTasdlf asdajla;sdfasdfasdfass nothing will happen. That being said, the above technique is a clever way to change (or slightly modified, insert) whole lines in a file. TGI says moo	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: how do I swap 2 strings in a file? by srawls (Friar) on May 09, 2001 at 20:51 UTC
Ok, agreed. But I'd still like to clean up that regex, so here it goes: `$string=~s/($string_1)(.*)($string_2)/$3$2$1/msg;` [download] That should be a bit better than matching the whole string, also I added the /m modifier. I put the /s modifier in too because I thought /msg just looked cool : ) The 15 year old, freshman programmer, Stephen Rawls	[reply] [d/l]