From: Jeremy Bopp <jeremy@...>
Date: 2010-09-18T04:45:27+09:00
Subject: Re: search and replace

On 9/17/2010 2:02 PM, John Smith wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I want to be able to run a program that will do a bunch
> of searches specified in an array of strings, and replace the
> first occurrence of those strings with strings specified on a
> second array for a given text file.
> 
> What would be the best way to do this?

Maybe something like this:

changes = [
  ['string1', 'replacement1'],
  ['string2', 'replacement2'],
  ...
]

File.open('somefile') do |f|
  f.each do |line|
    line_changed = false
    changes.each do |search, replacement|
      if line.sub!(search, replacement) then
        line_changed = true
        puts line
        break
      end
    end
    puts line unless line_changed
  end
end


-Jeremy