perl question from a perl newb

[tolstoy]

How can I open a file and write back to it?

For instance, I want to open a file, search for all instances of a word, replace them, then close the file. I'm assuming this is very simple, but being new to perl, I cannot figure out how to do this.

[Ashcrow]

You will open a file like this ...

open FILE, ">>/pathto/file";

To search and replace you probably want to use regex stuff since it's the most powerfull and the simplest ...

s/replace/me/;

or

$scalar =~ s/replace/me/;

There are a few diffrent ways you can write back to the file. You could read the whole file in and do changes and then write it out, or attempt to change out line by line. I would probably choose the first way since it is easier to code and much simpler to bug fix.

To print to a file all yu have to do is print to a filehandle ...

print $stuff FILE;

Check out http://www.perlmonks.org as well as you might find the answer there.

[Dizzybacon]

Try here (http://www.cgi101.com/class/).
This tutorial explains opening files and reading and writing to them very well.

Dizzy

[cga]

8) Perlmonks 8)

[gorn]

perl -e 's/foo/bar/g' -pi foo.txt

but that's only if thats all you want to do. if you want to have it a part of a program it's more difficult. you'll need to open for read first:

open IN, "<foo.txt";
open OUT, ">bar.txt";
#then read the data
while(<A>) {
  s/foo/bar/g;
  print OUT $_;
}
close IN;
close OUT;

good luck