UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have the following command prompt perl one liner:

Code:

perl -e 's/[a-z]\(\)\\,\"]//g; s/^\s//g; s/;/\n/g' -pi result1

I tried to move this one liner into a perl script I am practicing with (just started learning perl right now).

I tried the following (I only know how to open a file and output to a new file right now):

Code:

open (var2, "result1") or die "Error Opening Target\n";
open (var3, ">mod2") or die "Error Generating Target\n";


while (<var2>) {
  $_=~s/[a-z\(\)\\,\"]//g; 
  $_=~s/^\s+//g; 
  $_=~s/;/\n/g;
  print var3;
}

Which does nothing (I get an empty var3 file)

Can anyone point out what mistakes I made in the script?

The -p option adds this around the entire script:

Code:

  while (<>) { 
    ...
  }
  continue { 
    print $_; 
  }

The -i option modifies the <> expression (above) so that $ARGV, which contains the name of the currently-being-read file, is backed up to a temporary file, and the output (STDOUT) directed to a file named the same as the original. Or something like that.

That's why turning it into a script is not quite so easy. You have to do that stuff yourself OR... you can just do:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -pi

#... your code here

Except in that case, you DONT want to open your filenames as you are doing.