search and replace

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

HI, I need to do a search and replace across many text files with a command like:

perl -i.bak -p -e’s/old/new/g’ *.sh
[download]

However the text I need to replace is:

mail xmlfeedback -s "feed invalid for agent 1027"
[download]

with this:

mail -s "feed invalid for agent 1027" xmlfeedback
[download]

where the agent # is different in every file. How can I write the regex to locate and switch the order of the words as required above? thanks in advance

Comment on search and replace Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: search and replace by choroba (Cardinal) on Sep 28, 2012 at 08:06 UTC
Just remove the "xmlfeedback" and add it to the end of the line if the line matches: `perl -pe 's/xmlfeedback //,s/$/ xmlfeedback/ if /^mail xmlfeedback -s +"feed invalid for agent .*"/'` [download] لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ	[reply] [d/l]
Re: search and replace by johngg (Canon) on Sep 28, 2012 at 08:10 UTC
Something like this perhaps. `perl -pi.bak -e 's/^(mail)( xmlfeedback)(.)/$1$3$2/' .sh` [download] Cheers, JohnGG	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: search and replace by Peamasii (Sexton) on Oct 04, 2012 at 10:38 UTC
Thank you, this solution worked great! I didn't dive into the Regexp solutions because I suspected there was a simple way to switch those tokens around just like this solution does. I just couldn't find an example anywhere. Thanks again for everyone's help.	[reply]
Re: search and replace by Anonymous Monk on Sep 28, 2012 at 08:12 UTC
Dude, perlrequick, Regexp::English, Regexp::Common, Iterator::Files, ARGV::readonly `s{^\Qmail xmlfeedback -s \E(.)$}{mail -s $1 xmlfeedback}sgx; s{^mail xmlfeedback -s ("feed invalid for agent \d+")\s$}{mail -s $1 +xmlfeedback}sgx;` [download] `use Regexp::English; my $re = Regexp::English -> start_of_line -> literal('mail xmlfeedback -s') -> remember -> literal('"feed invalid for agent ') -> multiple -> digit -> end -> literal('"') -> end -> zero_or_more -> whitespace_char -> end -> end_of_line; print $re; __END__ (?^:^mail\ xmlfeedback\ \-s(\"feed\ invalid\ for\ agent\ (?:\d+)\")(?: +\s*)$)` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: search and replace by Anonymous Monk on Sep 28, 2012 at 08:15 UTC
`use Regexp::English; my $re = Regexp::English -> start_of_line -> literal('mail xmlfeedback -s ') -> remember -> zero_or_more -> non_newline -> end -> end_of_line; print $re; __END__ (?^:^mail\ xmlfeedback\ \-s\ ((?:(?s)[^\n]*)$))` [download]	[reply] [d/l]