From: Tim Hammerquist <tim@...>
Date: 2002-08-23T15:17:40+09:00
Subject: Re: idiomatic write

WATANABE Hirofumi graced us by uttering:
> Vivek Nallur <nvivek@konark.ncst.ernet.in> writes:
> 
>> I want to search for a pattern in a file, replace it with something and
>> then write it back to the file. In the shell-script idiom,
>> I'd do:
>> 
>> sed /pattern/replace myfile > tmpfile
>> mv tmpfile myfile
>> 
>> In Ruby, I could do the same thing, slurp the file into a string and then
>> write it back again. I was wondering if there's a more idiomatic way of
>> doing it, in place, i.e., edit the file straight away. This could probably
>> be more practical when the file to be edited is a huge one...
>> 
>> Any pointers(sic)...
> 
> % ruby -i~ -pe 'gsub(/pattern/, "replace")' myfile

Does this work if /pattern/ spans lines?

Tim Hammerquist
-- 
We all know linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.
    -- Linus Torvalds