From: Charles Mills <cmills@...>
Date: 2005-08-12T14:21:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Noob wants Q&D pointer, regexp replacement.

Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
> William James wrote:
> > ssi@interlog.com wrote:
> >> Hello, I do perl once every 5 years.  Or longer.  I hate having to read
> >> chapter 1, page 1 again every time ;-)...
> >>
> >> Can someone point me to a script that does almost what I want... and
> >> I'm sure I can touch it up to do what I want.
> >>
> >> I want to search file1 for regexp1.  Each time I find it, I want to
> >> replace it with the entire contents of file2.
> >>
> >> When done, I want to replace file1 with the result.
> >>
> >> There are probably a hundred perl scripts on the web that do
> >> approximately that without me reading chapter 1 again ;-)...
> >
> > Richard, since you use Perl so infrequently that you have
> > to start on page 1, why not switch to an easier language?
> > Once you begin using Ruby, you will welcome opportunities
> > to use it.
> >
> > And note the arrogance and rudeness of "Perl gurus".
> > They will condescend to help you only when they are
> > "bored".
> >
> > #!ruby
> >
> > # This program takes at least two file names on the command
> > # line.  The first file is read and its contents stored in
> > # contents.  All subsequent files are edited "in place", the
> > # word "target" being replaced with the contents of the first
> > # file.
> >
> > contents = IO.read( ARGV.shift ).chomp
> >
> > # Start in-place processing; make backups with the extension.
> > $-i = ".bak"
> >
> > while line = gets
> >   print line.sub( /target/, contents )
> > end
>
> Anybody over at comp.lang.ruby who has a really trivial task for this
> William character who obviously has nothing to do? Be sure it would be
> appreciated at comp.lang.perl.misc.
>

I assume this isn't a troll.
Can it be done in one line (without semicolons)?

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
contents = File.read(ARGV[0]).gsub(/regexp/, File.read(ARGV[1]))
File.open(ARGV[0], 'w') { |f| f.write(contents) }

-Charlie