command line search and replace

drodinthe559 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks, can anyone tell me why the below code won't work. I'm able to make a backup of the file but the original file goes unchanged. I'm doing this on Windows XP. Could that be why its not working? perl -i.txt -pe 's/\s//g' test.log

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Re: command line search and replace by toolic (Bishop) on Dec 06, 2011 at 21:43 UTC
I can reproduce your results in a DOS shell. When I change to double-quotes, it behaves as you desire (it removes all whitespace from the test.log file): `perl -i.txt -pe "s/\s//g" test.log` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: command line search and replace by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Dec 06, 2011 at 21:58 UTC
BTW: Use of warnings produces the same unwanted result described in the OP plus a helpful warning (`xxx` is a text file with whitespace): `>perl -wMstrict -i.bak -pe 's/\s//g' xxx Useless use of a constant (s/\s//g) in void context at -e line 1.` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: command line search and replace by drodinthe559 (Monk) on Dec 06, 2011 at 22:08 UTC
That makes sense. Thanks for your help.	[reply]