UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Good day!

I am trying to learn how to use the "sed" editor, to perform multiple edits on multiple files in multiple directories.

I have one script that tries to call up each file and process it according to the edits listed in a second script. I am using a small input text to test these, at this point. I show both scripts and the input text below.

(a) I am not sure that I am using the "find" command effectively, to find all the files that will be nested in various directories. They will all be *.tex files.

(b) I am certainly not using sed correctly -- help?

If anyone can help me forward on either of these issues, I'll be very grateful!

Kielitaide
------------------------------------------------------------------------
find.sh
-------------
#!/bin/sh

for file in 'find *.txt'
do
mv $file $file.sed
./edit.sh $file.sed > $file
rm $file.sed
done
------------------------------------------------------------------------
edit.sh
---------
#!/bin/sh

sed -e s/e/I/g $1
sed -e s/a/E/g $1
------------------------------------------------------------------------
abc.txt
---------
apple

banana

cherry
------------------------------------------------------------------------

You forgot to specify a path and operator for find to search, try this in your for loop:

`find /directory/to/search -name *.txt`

Your sed statements seems okay to me, if what you are trying to do is globally substitute e for I and a for E in the files you are finding.

Hope this helps, if not ask again!

Regards

Thank you very much

I have about 400 .tex files nested in a number of sub...directories, within about 20 subdirectories, within one directory.

How should I tell "find" to look into all those subdirectories etc. to find all the *.tex files?

Now my find.sh says:

#!/bin/sh

for file in 'find ./ -name *.txt'
do
mv $file $file.sed
./edit.sh $file.sed > $file
rm $file.sed
done

The name of the draft is now "input.txt", and the errors I receive are:

mv: invalid option -- n
Try 'mv --help' for more information.
-/find.sh: $file ambiguous redirect
rm: invalid option -- n
Try 'rm --help' for more information.

Thanks and best wishes!
K

Find will search recursively down from the path that you specify, but you may want to change the syntax of your find command in your for loop to:

`find /path/to/search -name "*".txt`

This will search recursively down that path to find all *.txt files, and find should not complain of a missing conjunction

Hope this helps.

Regards.

It is very kind of you to take the time to help me.

Unfortunately, when I added the " double quotes around the asterisk "*", nothing changed -- I got the same error messages.

oooo
ooooo <-- K sends cookies
oooo

#!/bin/sh

for file in `find . -name "*.txt"`
do

perl -pi.bak -e 's/e/I/g; s/akE/g;' $file

#mv $file $file.sed
# sed -e 's/e/I/g;s/a/E/g' $file.sed > $file
done


in Perl method it will first backup the file with '.bak' then edit it in place.


HTH

Hi there

Now I have multi-file.sh:

#!/bin/sh
for file in 'find . -name "*.txt"'
do
perl -pi.bak -e 's/e/I/g; s/a/E/g;' $file
done

And I have a text file "input.txt":

apple
banana
cherry

And error messages:

Can't open find: No such file or directory
Can't do inplace edit: . is not a regular file.
Can't open -name: No such file or directory
Can't open "*.txt": No such file or directory



K