A shell script to include a message on line 2 of every text file in a director tree?

Rotwang · 02-26-2009, 12:57 PM

So, I'm releasing something open source (woo!). And I want to include a message at the top of every source file in a directory tree. Actually, I want to add it on line 2 of every file (or "after line 1").

I could do this in perl or php, but I was wondering if there's some nifty shell script I can use with cat and find or something.

thanks

colucix · 02-26-2009, 01:32 PM

You can try sed using the i command to insert one or more lines of text before line 2:

Code:

sed -i.bck '2i new line' list_of_files

this will do a backup copy of the original files, adding extension .bck. You can put the whole list of files as argument or eventually you can use this command in conjunction with find to look for files based on some criteria.

Rotwang · 02-26-2009, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by colucix

You can try sed using the i command to insert one or more lines of text before line 2:

Code:

sed -i.bck '2i new line' list_of_files

this will do a backup copy of the original files, adding extension .bck. You can put the whole list of files as argument or eventually you can use this command in conjunction with find to look for files based on some criteria.

Ok almost perfect. The message I want to insert is actually multiple lines- can I stick the text from another file on line 2 rather than input from the quotes there?

I also don't want the backup, but I think I can figure out how to remove that by piping find "*.bck" and piping that to rm -f or something.

colucix · 02-26-2009, 03:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rotwang

Ok almost perfect. The message I want to insert is actually multiple lines- can I stick the text from another file on line 2 rather than input from the quotes there?

Yes. To insert the content of another file use the command r. Suppose you have the text to insert in a file named insert.txt

Code:

sed -i '1r insert.txt' file1 file2 file3

This will insert the content of insert.txt after the first line in file1, file2 and file3.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rotwang

I also don't want the backup, but I think I can figure out how to remove that by piping find "*.bck" and piping that to rm -f or something.

Nope. Just remove the .bck from the -i option, as in my example above

Code:

sed -i blah blah blah

will edit files in place without doing the backup. Dangerous if you don't test the command before actually editing your original files!

Rotwang · 02-26-2009, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by colucix

Yes. To insert the content of another file use the command r. Suppose you have the text to insert in a file named insert.txt

Code:

sed -i '1r insert.txt' file1 file2 file3

This will insert the content of insert.txt after the first line in file1, file2 and file3.

Nope. Just remove the .bck from the -i option, as in my example above

Code:

sed -i blah blah blah

will edit files in place without doing the backup. Dangerous if you don't test the command before actually editing your original files!

Thanks, here's what I ended up using, based on what you gave me:

find ./ -name "*.php" -exec sed -i '1r ./eachfile.txt' {} \;

thanks.