inplace - emulate sed/perl/ruby in-place editing
| Use Case | Command | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Basic inβplace edit | gawk -i inplace '{ print }' file | Replace each file with its processed output |
| Keep backup with suffix | gawk -i inplace -v inplace::suffix=.bak '{ gsub(/foo/, "bar") } 1' file | Save original as file.bak before overwriting |
| Disable then reβenable | gawk -i inplace -v inplace::enable=0 '...' normalfile -v inplace::enable=1 '...' editfile | Skip inβplace for normalfile, edit editfile |
| Compatibility suffix (env) | INPLACE_SUFFIX=.orig gawk -i inplace '...' file | Use INPLACE_SUFFIX environment variable |
gawk -i inplace ...
The βοΈ inplace extension adds two functions named inplace_begin() and inplace_end(). These functions are meant to be invoked from the inplace.awk wrapper which is installed when gawk is.
By default, each named file on the command line is replaced with a new file of the same name whose contents are the results of running the AWK program. πΎ If the user supplies an AWK variable named inplace::suffix in a BEGIN rule or on the command line, then the inplace extension concatenates that suffix onto the original filename and uses the result as a filename for renaming the original.
For backwards compatibility, the variable will also check INPLACE_SUFFIX (in the awk namespace) for the suffix to use if inplace::suffix is not set.
π One can disable inplace editing selectively by placing inplace::enable=0 on the command line prior to files that should be processed normally. One can reenable inplace editing by placing inplace::enable=1 prior to files that should be subject to inplace editing.
gawk -i inplace 'script' files ...
gawk -i inplace -f scriptfile files ...
GAWK: Effective AWK Programming, filefuncs(3am), fnmatch(3am), fork(3am), ordchr(3am), readdir(3am), readfile(3am), revoutput(3am), rwarray(3am).
Andrew Schorr, schorr AT telemetry-investments.com.
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