Multi-pattern find & replace

[moochie]

Hi guys,

To give you a bit of background i have the task of removing the Source Integrity comments from all text files (*.java, *.xml, *.js) for our move to SVN. About time! The structure of the files is as follows

...
<!--
$Log: SchemaToCastorMapping.xsl $

....
-->
...

I initially assumed that this would always appear at the end of the file & the solution was the following function which loops through all xml files with the text "$Log:" and remove all text until "-->". I then appended --> to the end of the file.:

function removeXML {
echo "Processing filetypes : *.xml started"
find . -name "*.xml" -exec grep -l "\$Log:" {} \; | while read f
do
echo "Removing from : " $f
cp $f tmp.tmp
chmod +w $f
cat tmp.tmp | sed '/$Log:/,/-->/ d' > $f
rm tmp.tmp
echo '-->' >> $f
done
echo "Processing filetypes : *.xml Compete"
}

However given that the log comments can appear anywhere in the file I now need to do a sed pattern find & replace instead of a sed pattern delete.

Can anyone suggest the sed command i need to do this. Instead of using the delete action on the sed parrten i wish to replace with "-->".

Thanks

Rich

[burschik]

As long as the comments start and end on a new line, I don't see your problem. The delete pattern will still work.

[burschik]

Even if not, see here

[moochie]

Hi burschik,

Thanks for your reply. The problem i have is that i now want to convert the delete to a replace so any instances of my pattern search will be replaced with "-->" insteard of just deleting the block?

Can you provide me an example of the sed command to do this?

Thanks

Rich

[burschik]

The last line of the script I linked to is a replace command. It replaces anything in SGML comment markers with nothing. You could easily replace it with something else.