> I am trying to read a file
> This file has a line containing string 'disable = yes'
>
> I want to change this line to 'disable = no'
Sounds like
sed -i 's/disable *= *yes/disable = no/' file.txt
would do what you want. It doesn't catch word boundaries, so if
you have something like "foodisable = yes", it will replace this
too. Additionally, it only expects spaces around the equal-sign,
so if you have tabs, you'd have to modify accordingly.
If it must be done in python,
import re
r = re.compile(r"(\bdisable\s*=\s*)yes\b")
outfile = file('out.txt', 'w')
for line in file('in.txt'):
outfile.write(r.sub(r'\1no', line))
Add the re.IGNORECASE option if so desired. This doesn't have
the cautions listed above for the sed version. Wreckless code!
> The concern here is that , i plan to take into account the white spaces
> also.
I'm not sure what you intend by this. Do you want to disregard
whitespace? Do you want to keep leading indentation?
The above python should *just* replace "yes" with "no" in the
above context, not touching space or anything of the like.
-tkc
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