You may want to start looking at some XML parsing modules, but assuming this is a quickie, I can point out that your problem is starting with the use of forward slash.
Remember: your forward slash is your separator for the regular exp. Try replacing it with something else like | or % and go from there - You can do it! Like this: s| _\</pat|"</pat"|g Not: s/ _\</pat/"</pat"/g -----Original Message----- From: Saskia van der Elst [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 12:26 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: search and replace using regex I have trouble executing a search and replace through all files in a certain directory. I want to replace " _</pat" by "</pat" Can I match a white-space? I have tried the following regex: s/ _\</pat/"</pat"/g and tried to incorporate it in the following script: #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w use strict; use warnings; open(INFILE,"<A_Z.xml") || die "Couldn't open file for reading!\n"; open(OUTFILE,">A_Z.new") || die "Couldn't open file.new for writing!\n"; while(<INFILE>){ $_ =~ s/"_\</pat"/"\</pat"/gi; #g for every occurrence, i for case-insensitive print OUTFILE $_; } close INFILE; close OUTFILE; rename("A_Z.new","A_Zclean.xml") || die "Couldn't rename the new file!\n"; #automatically kills the old file { local ( $^I, @ARGV ) = ( '.bak', 'B' ); s/\b_\</pat\b/\</pat/g while <> } The docs don't answer all my questions. Any help will be highly appreciated. I wish there was an absolute-beginners list... Saskia -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
