Published at LXer:

The three miscellaneous demonstrations in this post all have something to do with form text and placeholders. Form text is text saved as a template and variable text is added as needed. A good example is a form letter. The basic text of the letter is stored as a document, and the date, the addressee and the salutation are variable bits that get added before the letter is sent. Sometimes the missing text is marked with a placeholder like "{DATE}". Form text and placeholders in plain-text documents are easy to deal with on the command line, as shown below.

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