INPLACE(3am)

NAME
inplace - emulate sed/perl/ruby in-place editing

SYNOPSIS
gawk -i inplace ...

DESCRIPTION
The inplace extension adds two functions named inplace_begin() and inplace_end(). These functions are meant to be invoked from the inplace.awk wrapper which is installed when gawk is.

By default, each named file on the command line is replaced with a new file of the same name whose contents are the results of running the AWK program. Since a new file is created, if the file is a link (whether hard or symbolic), the link will be broken. This behavior is consistent with GNU sed which also breaks links when the -i or --in-place flag is used. If the user supplies an AWK variable named inplace::suffix in a BEGIN rule or on the command line, then the inplace extension concatenates that suffix onto the original filename and uses the result as a filename for renaming the original.

For backwards compatibility, the variable will also check INPLACE_SUFFIX (in the awk namespace) for the suffix to use if inplace::suffix is not set.

One can disable inplace editing selectively by placing inplace::enable=0 on the command line prior to files that should be processed normally. One can reenable inplace editing by placing inplace::enable=1 prior to files that should be subject to inplace editing.

BUGS
While the extension does attempt to preserve ownership and permissions, it makes no attempt to copy the ACLs from the original file.

If the program dies prematurely, as might happen if an unhandled signal is received, a temporary file may be left behind.

EXAMPLE
gawk -i inplace 'script' files ...
gawk -i inplace -f scriptfile files ...

SEE ALSO
GAWK: Effective AWK Programming, filefuncs(3am), fnmatch(3am), fork(3am), ordchr(3am), readdir(3am), readfile(3am), revoutput(3am), rwarray(3am).

AUTHOR
Andrew Schorr, schorr@telemetry-investments.com.

COPYING PERMISSIONS
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