another question about search and replace text

graziano1968 · 08-02-2006, 04:01 AM

Hello

when I need to search and replace some code in several files I use this

Code:

find /your/home/dir -name "*.txt" | xargs perl -pi -e 's/stringtoreplace/replacementstring/g

Well,

when I have to search and replace something like this

Code:

<br>test<br>

on the same line I have no problem

when I have to search and replace something like this

Code:

<br>
test
<br>

with the code on separate lines I Can't . What to do to search and replace

Code:

<br>
test
<br>

with

Code:

OK

?

Thank you

spirit receiver · 08-02-2006, 09:08 AM

This won't work with Perl's -p switch as it reads each line separately. If you want to use Perl, an alternative would be to write a script that opens each file and reads its content into a single variable.
But I think that using sed will be a little less cumbersome here:

Code:

sed -n -i.bak -e '1{$!N;$!N;};/^<br>\ntest\n<br>/{s/^<br>\ntest\n<br>/OK/;$!N;$!N};P;$!N;D' file1 file2

This will make a backup of each file first.

berbae · 08-02-2006, 09:14 AM

This seems to do what you want:

Quote:

find /your/home/dir -name "*.txt" -exec sed -i '/ /,/ / c OK' {} \;

I presumed that is a sort of delimiter which goes always in pairs.
Can you confirm that is a delimiter?

spirit receiver · 08-02-2006, 09:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by berbae

This seems to do what you want:[...]

Uh, that is, unless there are other occurrences of ' '.