From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2007-06-14T06:30:28+09:00
Subject: Re: why writing the file is partial

On 13.06.2007 20:16, Rick DeNatale wrote:
> On 6/13/07, Li Chen <chen_li3@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
> 
>> > But this will only work in the case where the replacement is the same
>> > length at the original, if you you're either going to leave stuff
>> > behind, or will overwrite the next line.  In either case you're more
>> > likely to end up with gibberish than something you like.
>>
>> What am I supposed to do if the replacement is not same size?
> 
> Write to another file, then rename when you are done.
> 
> This is standard posix practice.

And you can even do it in a one liner.  See ruby's command line options 
-i and -p.  You can then do

ruby -i.bak -pe 'gsub /.../, "..."' file

Kind regards

	robert