I've got a bunch of files (40 or so) and in each there is a substitution I need to perform.

I execuet the following sed command but it just make the changes to the screen without affecting the original file.

sed "s/, LA/,LA/g" *

(All files in the directory need this update).

So I tried redirecting...

for x in *
do
sed "s/, LA/,LA/g" $x > new_$x
done

And that worked. But I'm not sure about renaming the files back to what they were. mv obviously doesnt' like the wildcards and I'm not sure how to convert back.

I'd also like to know if there is a way to do this without piping to a new file...

__________________
Pete

there is probably a much better way to do this. Please forgive me I have never done any shell programming before (i want to learn) and I just wanted to rack my brain trying to figure out an answer to your problem. here is what I got to work for me. it does however pipe to a new file. sorry i couldn't help you there.



for x in *
do
sed "s/, LA/,LA/g" $x > temp
cat temp > $x
rm temp
done


just make sure you don't already have a file named temp. if yo do then just change the name temp to a file you don't already have.

----------------------
tD

I have a minor change to your script. Which will do the job.

Make a file with the listing of the files you want to change. This might be necessary if the directory your 40 files are in has other files that you don't want to change in it.

Make a file with only the filenames of your 40 files in it. Then do the script this way. (with backtics)


for x in `cat filename`
do
sed "s/, LA/,LA/g" $x > temp
cat temp > $x
rm temp
done


By default the 'sed' command will output all lines, even the ones it doesn't modify. If you did only want the lines that you modified to be output use this option 'sed -n ....'. This will suppress all lines that weren't modified.

Now that I think about it, you really don't need the 'rm temp' because your line, "sed "s/, LA/,LA/g" $x > temp", has only the '>' which will overwrite the temp file each time you come thru the 'for loop'.

So this will work as well.

for x in `cat filename`
do
sed "s/, LA/,LA/g" $x > temp
cat temp > $x

done

__________________
My brain is your brain

true you don't need the rm temp, but I just added it so it wasn't left over when the script was finished.

Excellent..... in this instance all the files in the directory are to be modified...and i want all lines including those not modified,.. so a simple redirection to temp and back to $x will work just fine.

rm temp... harmless either way....so that's cool. Thanks guys..

__________________
Pete