Open files in a dir then gsub all of them?

ruby-talk
1

Hey there list-
  Can someone help out a n00b with a simple problem. What is the proper way to open all text files in a directory and the call gsub on each file? Thanks in advance.

-Ezra Zygmuntowicz
Yakima Herald-Republic
WebMaster
509-577-7732
ezra@yakima-herald.com

2

Hi,

Can someone help out a n00b with a simple problem. What is the proper
way to open all text files in a directory and the call gsub on each
file? Thanks in advance.

This is something you can even do from the command line:

  ruby -i~ -pe 'gsub(/foo/,"bar")' *.baz

The above should change foo to bar in all *.baz files, and
save the original files as *.baz~

Or, without using the command line:

  files = Dir["*.txt"]

  files.each do |filename|
    content = File.read(filename) # note: File#read is ruby 1.8+
    if content.gsub!(/foo/, "bar")
      File.open(filename, "w") {|io| io.print content }
    end
  end

The above is untested, but should read each .txt file, perform
the gsub, and only write the file back if anything changed.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Bill

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From: "Ezra Zygmuntowicz" <ezra@yakima-herald.com>