man > inplace(3am)

INPLACE(3am)                          GNU Awk Extension Modules                         INPLACE(3am)

NAME
       inplace - emulate sed/perl/ruby in-place editing

SYNOPSIS
       gawk -i inplace ...

DESCRIPTION
       The  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.  If the user supplies an AWK vari‐
       able 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 re‐
       naming the original.

       For backwards compatibility, the variable will also check INPLACE_SUFFIX (in  the  awk  name‐
       space) for the suffix to use if inplace::suffix is not set.

       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  plac‐
       ing inplace::enable=1 prior to files that should be subject to inplace editing.

BUGS
       While  the  extension does attempt to preserve ownership and permissions, it makes no attempt
       to copy the ACLs from the original file.

       If the program dies prematurely, as might happen if an unhandled signal is received, a tempo‐
       rary file may be left behind.

EXAMPLE
       gawk -i inplace 'script' files ...
       gawk -i inplace -f scriptfile files ...

SEE ALSO
       GAWK: Effective AWK Programming, filefuncs(3am), fnmatch(3am), fork(3am), ordchr(3am),  read‐
       dir(3am), readfile(3am), revoutput(3am), rwarray(3am).

AUTHOR
       Andrew Schorr, schorr AT telemetry-investments.com.

COPYING PERMISSIONS
       Copyright © 2012, 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019, Free Software Foundation, Inc.

       Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual page provided the
       copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

       Permission  is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual page under the
       conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is  distrib‐
       uted under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

       Permission  is  granted  to copy and distribute translations of this manual page into another
       language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this  permission  no‐
       tice may be stated in a translation approved by the Foundation.

Free Software Foundation                     Jun 26 2018                                INPLACE(3am)