UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'm sure glad I found this forum... This is my first post, so please be gentle...

I tried searching everywhere, but the terminology is so common that I cannot find a solution to my problem.

I'm looking for a GREP statement to do the following...

I need a search and append function that will search for the word "The " at the beginning of a line, and if it exists, trim it, and append it to the end of the line.

(note: it needs to ensure the first 4 chars are "the " and not modify fields with "the" in the middle of the text.

Two examples:

BEFORE:
The Beatles
The Beginning and the End

AFTER:
Beatles, The
Beginning and the End, The


Can anyone point me to a good example, or help me out? It would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Code:

perl -pe 's/^(The )(.*)/\2, \1/' file

Code:

% cat > testfile
The Beatles
The Beginning and the End

% sed 's/^The //; s/$/, The/' testfile
Beatles, The
Beginning and the End, The

Or better:

Code:

% sed '/^The / {s///; s/$/, The/}' testfile

Code:

 
bash-3.00$ nawk ' /^The / {for(i=2;i<=NF;i++) { if(i==NF) printf ("%s, %s\n",$NF,$1); else printf("%s ",$i);}}' test
Beatles, The
Beginning and the End, The

Code:

sed 's/^The \(.*\)/\1 ,The/' file

Thanks very much, guys!