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Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script

matteoguglielmi
Novice

Mar 26, 2013, 5:28 AM

Post #1 of 15 (1576 views)

Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script	Can't Post

Source this set of bash functions:

Code

printToStdErr() 
{ 
  [ "$1" ] || { 
    printToStdErr "USAGE: $FUNCNAME MESSAGE" 
    return 0 
  } 
 
  printf "%s\n" "$*" >&2 
} 
 
assertVarValidName() 
{ 
  [ "$1" ] || { 
    printToStdErr "USAGE: $FUNCNAME VARNAME" 
    return 0 
  } 
 
  case $1 in 
    [!a-zA-Z_]*|*[!a-zA-z0-9_]*) return 1 ;; 
  esac 
} 
 
assertVarIsSet() 
{ 
  [ "$1" ] || { 
    printToStdErr "USAGE: $FUNCNAME VARNAME" 
    return 0 
  } 
 
  assertVarValidName "$1" && [ "${!1+X}" == X ] 
} 
 
replaceFirstMatchingLine() { 
  case $# in 
    0|1|2) 
      echo 
      echo "USAGE: $FUNCNAME PERLPATTERN PERLREPLACEMENT INPUTFILE1 ... [INPUTFILEN]" 
      echo 
    ;; 
    *) 
      local pattern="$1" && shift 
      local replacement="$1" && shift 
      local oPTS 
 
      assertVarIsSet iNLINE && oPTS='-i' 
 
      perl $oPTS -n -e '!$t{$ARGV} 
                        and @m = ( /'"$pattern"'/g ) 
                        and $p = join ").*(", @m 
                        and s/.*($p).*\n*/'"$replacement"'/ 
                        and $t{$ARGV}++; 
                        print "$_"' "$@" 
    ;; 
  esac 
}

Lets now suppose we have two text files called txt1:

Code

   dsgsdgs 
  nnn  ddd   l 
   dsgsdgs 
  nnn  gggg  a

and txt2:

Code

   dsgsdgs 
  nnnddd 
   dsgsdgs 
   dsgsdgs 
   dsgsdgs 
   dsgsdgs 
  nnn  eee   f 
   dsgsdgs 
  nnn  222   f

Now try this out yourself and see how powerful this function can be:

replaceFirstMatchingLine $'(n+)\s+' $'$1#\n' txt?

replaceFirstMatchingLine $'(n+)\s+(\w+)' $'$1#$2#\n' txt?

replaceFirstMatchingLine $'(n+)\s+(\w+)(\s+\w)' $'$1#$2#$3#\n' txt?

If you wanna make it "inline", just run it this way:

iNLINE= replaceFirstMatchingLine $....

As you see this one-liner works on multiple files and on the first matching line only.

The problem arises when the pattern we try to match contains any of the "dirty dozen" characters such as ()\ etc...

This will screw up the pattern variable $p because the dirty dozen is NOT escaped first.

This is exactly what I'm not able to add to the perl one-liner function.

I'd need something like this basically:

Code

perl $oPTS -n -e '!$t{$ARGV} 
                  and @m = ( /'"$pattern"'/g ) 
                  and foreach $a (@m) { push @p, quotemeta $a } 
                  and $p = join ").*(", @p 
                  and s/.*($p).*\n*/'"$replacement"'/ 
                  and $t{$ARGV}++; 
                  print "$_"' "$@"

which does not work though.

Do you know why it's wrong and how to get it working the way I want to?

Thanks a lot for your help!

Best,

--matt

Laurent_R
Veteran / Moderator

Mar 26, 2013, 12:42 PM

Post #2 of 15 (1567 views)

Re: [matteoguglielmi] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

I do not have time to read in detail your long post right now, but it seems to me that you should have a look at Perl's quotemeta function, which is probably doing what you're looking for.

http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/quotemeta.html

Also look at the '\Q ... \E' regex options.

(This post was edited by Laurent_R on Mar 26, 2013, 12:45 PM)

matteoguglielmi
Novice

Mar 26, 2013, 3:47 PM

Post #3 of 15 (1556 views)

Re: [Laurent_R] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

That's exactly what I'm trying to do (see my initial post) but the problem is that I have to escape/quotemeta an array of patterns... how to do this in one line? (see proposed *wrong* solution)

matteoguglielmi
Novice

Mar 26, 2013, 4:13 PM

Post #4 of 15 (1553 views)

Re: [matteoguglielmi] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

I think I made it (thanks Laurent!), now testing:

Code

perl $oPTS -n -e '!$t{$ARGV} 
                  and @m = ( /'"$pattern"'/g ) 
                  and $p = join "\E).*(\Q", @m 
                  and s/.*(\Q$p\E).*\n*/'"$replacement"'/ 
                  and $t{$ARGV}++; 
                  print "$_"' "$@"

rovf
Veteran

Mar 27, 2013, 2:47 AM

Post #5 of 15 (1546 views)

Re: [matteoguglielmi] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

Quote

the problem is that I have to escape/quotemeta an array of patterns

Code

@m = map {quotemeta} (/..../q);

matteoguglielmi
Novice

Mar 27, 2013, 6:46 AM

Post #6 of 15 (1543 views)

Re: [rovf] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

Oh yes, this version works too and it's more elegant:

Code

perl $oPTS -n -e '!$t{$ARGV} 
                  and @m = map {quotemeta} ( /'"$pattern"'/g ) 
                  and $p = join ").*(", @m 
                  and s/.*($p).*\n*/'"$replacement"'/ 
                  and $t{$ARGV}++; 
                  print "$_"' "$@"

Thanks a lot!

rovf
Veteran

Mar 27, 2013, 8:32 AM

Post #7 of 15 (1538 views)

Re: [matteoguglielmi] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

Of course you could also get rid of @m:

Code

.... 
and $p = join ").*(", map {quotemeta} ( /'"$pattern"'/g ) 
....

matteoguglielmi
Novice

Mar 28, 2013, 7:05 AM

Post #8 of 15 (1522 views)

Re: [rovf] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

I have another one-liner which is supposed to simply append a line to a file.

The code here below just does it if and only if the file(s) do exist and is/are not empty.

How may I modify it then so that:

1) the one-liner works with empty files,

2) the one-liner creates the files if it they do not exist (I'd prefer perl to create the files, not bash).

Code

appendLine() { 
  case $# in 
    0|1) 
      echo 
      echo "USAGE: $FUNCNAME PERLREPLACEMENT INPUTFILE1 ... [INPUTFILEN]" 
      echo 
    ;; 
    *) 
      local replacement="$1" && shift 
      local oPTS 
 
      assertVarIsSet iNLINE && oPTS='-i' 
      perl $oPTS -n -e 'if (eof) { print "$_"; s/.*\n*/'"$replacement"'/; print "$_";} else { print "$_";}' "$@" 
    ;; 
  esac 
}

rovf
Veteran

Mar 28, 2013, 7:50 AM

Post #9 of 15 (1517 views)

Re: [matteoguglielmi] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

Do I miss something, or is it that your program doesn't do anything more than just appending a line containing the text PERLREPLACEMENT to the end of a file????? Well, there are corner cases (i.e. if PERLREPLACEMENT contains a $&), where the effect would be a little bit differences, but I somehow suspect that you didn't have those in mind.

Can you give me one (non-trivial) example, where you current solution is doing what it is supposed to do, so that I get a better understanding?

BTW, you will, in general, get more responses to such a topic, if you start a new thread when having a new problem, instead of re-using an existing one.

matteoguglielmi
Novice

Mar 28, 2013, 8:29 AM

Post #10 of 15 (1509 views)

Re: [rovf] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

Ok, will open a new thread next time.

Here is an example where it works:

Code

$ echo a > txt1 
 
$ echo b > txt2 
 
$ echo c >> txt2 
 
$ appendLine $'whatever\n' txt? 
a 
whatever 
b 
c 
whatever

Here is when it does not work:

Code

$ touch file1 
 
$ touch file2 
 
$ appendLine $'whatever\n' file? 
(no output)

So, what I'd like to have is:

1) file1 and file2 do not remain empty,

1) no need to touch/create them before calling appendLine (perl should create them instead when they are not present).

rovf
Veteran

Mar 28, 2013, 12:51 PM

Post #11 of 15 (1500 views)

Re: [matteoguglielmi] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

That's what I suspected: You just append a string to each file (if you supply the option -i, the file will be edited in place).

Why do you need Perl for this? In bash, you can easily do a

Code

echo whatever >> your_file_goes_here

to achieve the same effect, and this would automatically cope with empty and non-existence files.

Generalizing this to an array of filenames is left as an exercise ;-)

matteoguglielmi
Novice

Mar 29, 2013, 4:25 PM

Post #12 of 15 (1482 views)

Re: [rovf] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

Prepending the perl one-liner bash function with iNLINE=

Code

iNLINE= appendLine $'whatever\n' txt1 txt2

does not actually work for if the files do not exist a-priori, perl seems not to be able to create them out of the blue.

This can be easily fixed:

Code

appendLine() { 
  case $# in 
    0|1) 
      echo 
      echo "USAGE: $FUNCNAME PERLREPLACEMENT INPUTFILE1 ... [INPUTFILEN]" 
      echo 
    ;; 
    *) 
      local replacement="$1" && shift 
      local oPTS file 
 
      for file in "$@"; do 
        assertFileExists "$file" || > "$file" 
      done 
 
      assertVarIsSet iNLINE && oPTS='-i' 
 
      perl $oPTS -n -e 'if (eof) { print "$_"; s/.*\n*/'"$replacement"'/; print "$_";} else { print "$_";}' "$@" 
    ;; 
  esac 
}

but still, perl is not appending any line to them when they're empty.

Yes, do this in bash it's very easy, but I'd like to learn if perl can do it as well.

Kenosis
User

Mar 29, 2013, 6:07 PM

Post #13 of 15 (1479 views)

Re: [matteoguglielmi] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

Quote

... if the files do not exist a-priori ...

The problematic (not programmatic) issue of files not existing a-priori will be effectively handled by Perl 7's ontological and phenomenological feature set, which are in beta now. Wink

touch esse_est_percipi

George Berkeley would be proud...

matteoguglielmi
Novice

Mar 29, 2013, 8:05 PM

Post #14 of 15 (1474 views)

Re: [Kenosis] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

"verum ipsum factum"

--Giovan Battista Vico

Looking forward to perl-7 then!

Kenosis
User

Mar 29, 2013, 8:44 PM

Post #15 of 15 (1471 views)

Re: [matteoguglielmi] Problem With A One-Liner Perl Script [In reply to]	Can't Post

Quote

"verum ipsum factum"

Thank you for this! Am not familiar with Vico, but it's evident that his dictum is a precursor to constructivists' epistemology, which underpins a pedagogy that's now popular in many higher-ed institutions.

Well done!

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