Less Specific Search and Replace, multiple files - Perl

[UCCC]

So I often find myself needing to do a search and replace throughout an entire linux folder. Thanks To Google, I usually use a command such as the following which has always met my needs.

perl -pi -w -e 's/search/replace/g;' *.php

But right now I am needing to do something less specific and a little more difficult.

I want to search through an entire folder for all my PHP $_SESSION variables such as

$_SESSION['layout']
$_SESSION['userid']
etc.

and many more. All I really want to do is add the number 2 to all the variable names within the $_SESSION array so you would have

$_SESSION['layout2']
$_SESSION['userid2']
etc.

I dont suspect this is too difficult but special expressions are not my strong point. Can someone help me out? Much appreciated.

[Cabhan]

So I'm not great on Perl one-liners, but the regular expression here is fairly simple:

s/\$_SESSION\['(\w+)'\]/\$_SESSION['${1}2']/

What this does is to "capture" the actual text that appears between the ['...']. This is what the parentheses mean. This capture is stored into the special variable $1, which we can then use in the replacement text.

Does this make sense?

[ghostdog74]

only if your SESSION statements are on one line each, here's a snippet using find/gawk

find /path/to/search -type f -name  "*.php" -printf "%p\n" | gawk -F":" '
{
  while( ( getline line < $1)> 0 ){
    if ( line ~ /\$_SESSION/){
        b = gensub( /(.*\$_SESSION\[\047)(.*)(\047\])/, "\\1\\22\\3","g",line)
        line=b
    }
    print line > "temp"
  }
  cmd ="mv temp \047"$1"\047"
  #system(cmd) #uncomment to use   
}
'

[UCCC]

Thanks to both of you, have a great week.

[UCCC]

I thought this ended up being a non issue but I was wrong. Unfortunately I am struggling with both the suggestions in this thread.

When I use the Perl statment combined with Cabhan's Special Expression, I am getting an error message saying

-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

I try to Escape the ( and ) but that doesnt work. It runs, but produces no results.

When I try the code ghostdog74 write, and run it from a command prompt, it runs, but again there are no changes to the PHP file I am using to test.

Anyone out there who might help me today? Thanks

[Cabhan]

You're going to have to do a lot of weird Bash escaping. It's one reason I don't like one-liners .

The regular expression I gave, fully escaped for Bash (assuming that you are surrounding it in double-quotes), is:

"s/\\\$_SESSION\\['(\\w+)'\\]/\\\$_SESSION['\$\{1\}2'\]/"

It's annoying, but there you go. Note that I haven't actually tested this, but I believe it's correct.

[UCCC]

Cabhan - Thanks again, very much appreciated. I had just launched the site and had thousands of visitors excited and this session problem was a major problem! I was freaking out!

Whenever I find myself stuck in a situation, I find its best to find more simple solutions. So in the end, that is what I did. I asked myself, Why do I need to put the 2 at the end of the variable name? Why can't I just put it at the beginning. Much simpler. I was revealed.

Problem is definitely 100% solved. Thanks again.