String Replacement Tool

String Replacement

This tool was designed to go through text files (meaning: text, html, php, etc.) to search for and replace a particular text string (or regular expression). This is useful in the following scenarios:

Need to update information in every page of a website (i.e. change the contact's email address or phone number), without using templates.
Remove bogus tags inserted into HTML documents by programs such as Microsoft Word and it's <o:p> tag that does nothing other than add difficulty for those who read HTML.

The program was written in perl and will run on standard Linux systems as well as Windows (through ActivePerl). It requires no configuration on systems already running perl. See below for usage information

Download:

Version 0.1
	Linux tar -jxvf string_replace-0.1.tar.bz2		Windows unzip string_replace-0.1.zip

Version 0.1

Linux

tar -jxvf string_replace-0.1.tar.bz2

Windows

unzip string_replace-0.1.zip

Install

To install this program system-wide, simply place string_replace.pl into your path.

Linux: /usr/bin
Windows: C:\Windows\system32

Usage:

Command	Explanation
string_replace.pl "user@domain.com" "newuser@newdomain.com"	Changes the email address that appears on every page
string_replace.pl "<o:p>" ""	Removes all occurrences of <o:p> (because the second argument is blank)
string_replacement.pl Enter the phrase to replace: <o:p> Enter the phrase to replace it with: (just hit enter)	If you don't provide any arguments, the program will prompt them. Press ctrl+c to cancel the program if you make a mistake.

Command

Explanation

string_replace.pl "user@domain.com" "newuser@newdomain.com"

Changes the email address that appears on every page

string_replace.pl "<o:p>" ""

Removes all occurrences of <o:p> (because the second argument is blank)

string_replacement.pl
Enter the phrase to replace: <o:p>
Enter the phrase to replace it with: (just hit enter)

If you don't provide any arguments, the program will prompt them.

Press ctrl+c to cancel the program if you make a mistake.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl # # Simple script to replace text in a bunch of files. # Useful if the contact email for a whole website has changed # or to remove ugly frontpage tags. # # The license for this GPL software can be found in gpl.txt, or through www.gnu.org # # Author: Erik Costlow (erik@uhacc.net) # Website: http://www.costlowcorp.com # Date: April 8, 2004 # use strict; use File::Find; if(!$ARGV[0]){ print " Normal usage: $0 \"what to replace\" \"replace with this\"\n"; print " Enter the phrase to replace: "; $ARGV[0] = <STDIN>; chomp($ARGV[0]); print " Enter the phrase to replace it with: "; $ARGV[1] = <STDIN>; chomp($ARGV[1]); } print "Searching for: ".$ARGV[0]."\nReplacing with: $ARGV[1]\n\n"; find(\&wanted,"./"); print "\nFinished\n"; # Windows users don't like when the window just closes if($^O eq "MSWin32"){ print "Press Enter"; while(<> ne "\n"){}; } sub wanted{ (-f $_ && -w $_ && -T $_) or return; my $file=$_; my $found = 0; # If the string was found in $file print "Searching $file.\n"; open(INFILE,$file) or (print "Could not open $file for reading: $!\n" and return); my @text=<INFILE>; close(INFILE); for(my $x=0;$x<=$#text;$x++){ $text[$x]=~s/$ARGV[0]/$ARGV[1]/ig and $found = 1 and print " -Found in $file (line ".($x+1).")\n"; } if($found){ open(OUTFILE,">$file") or (print "Unable to open $file for writing: $!\n". "\t$file must be changed manually\n." and return); foreach(@text){ print OUTFILE $_; } close(OUTFILE); } }