From: Stefano Crocco <stefano.crocco@...>
Date: 2007-09-07T02:06:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Using external text file to do search and replace?

Alle gioved� 6 settembre 2007, Dan George ha scritto:
> I tried what you said and it shows it works and I get an Exit code: 0
> but nothing is modified.
>
> Here's what I have now:
>
> require 'yaml'
> promo = File.open('promo.yaml')
> yp = YAML::load_documents(promo) do |item|
> txt_files = Dir.glob('**/*.txt').each do |path|
> puts path
> � file = File.open(path).readlines.each { |line|
> � � if line.match(/PROMOS/)
> � � � then line.gsub!(item['search'], item['sub'])
> � � end }
> � File.open(path, 'w'){|f| f.write file}
> end
> end
>
> And my YAML file looks like this:
>
> ---
> search: /PROMO1=[A-Za-z0-9]+/
> sub: PROMO1=some_text
>
> Can anyone please tell me what's wrong with it?

The reason your code doesn't work is that the search string is stored in the 
YAML file as a string, not as a regexp. To use it as a regexp, you need to 
create a regexp from it: remove the delimiting / in the regexp in the YAML 
file and replace the call to gsub! with:

  gsub(Regexp.new(item['search']), item['sub'])

and it should work. 

Without creating the regexp, gsub! would look for a 
literal '/PROMO1=[A-Za-z0-9]+/' in the argument, not for a Regexp. (As I 
wrote in my previous post, you can store directly a in the YAML file:

  search: !ruby/regexp /PROMO1=[A-Za-z0-9]+/
).

By the way, you don't need to store the return value of YAML::load_documents 
in a variable.

I hope this helps

Stefano