I’m trying to find and replacace the string “placeholder” in a text
file. Any idea how I could get the following code to work?
file = File.open('/folder/template.txt', 'r+')
file.gsub!(/placeholder/, "word")
Thanks,
Peter
On 8/27/07, Peter M. [email protected] wrote:
I’m trying to find and replacace the string “placeholder” in a text
file. Any idea how I could get the following code to work?file = File.open('/folder/template.txt', 'r+') file.gsub!(/placeholder/, "word")Thanks,
The most “natural” way would be to use ruby-mmap.
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/mmap/
The other method would be of course:
File.open(“source.txt”, “r”) do |src|
File.open(“sink.txt”, “w”) do |sink|
src.each_line { |line| sink.write(line.gsub(/placeholder/, “word”))
}
end
end
require ‘fileutils’
FileUtils.mv(“sink.txt”, “source.txt”)
This requires twice the space of the file while working so it may not
be viable for large files.
Incidentily ruby has a shortcut for doing this:
ruby -inp -e ‘gsub!(/placeholder/, “word”)’ /folder/template.txt
To handle those really big files where you simply cannot afford to
have two copies simultaneously, or don;t have the address space to map
the whole file into memory with mmap, you can read in fixed sized
chunks, modify them in memory and then write them back out. It’s a bit
more complicated than “fixed sized” chunks since the transformed text
may be smaller of larger than the original chunk.
On 8/27/07, Peter M. [email protected] wrote:
I’m trying to find and replacace the string “placeholder” in a text
file. Any idea how I could get the following code to work?file = File.open('/folder/template.txt', 'r+') file.gsub!(/placeholder/, "word")Thanks,
Peter
Bunch of examples here:
http://pleac.sourceforge.net/pleac_ruby/fileaccess.html
–
Giles B.
Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com/
Follow up question:
How might I be able to make multiple placeholders within a text file? I
thought this would work:
File.open(“source.txt”, “r”) do |src|
File.open(“sink.txt”, “w”) do |sink|
src.each_line { |line| sink.write(line.gsub(/placeholder/, “word”))
sink.write(line.gsub(/placeholder2/,
“word2”))
}
end
end
, but my newbie assumptions were mistaken. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Peter
Thanks for your thoughful responses Logan and Giles. I’m going to use
the unnatural method for the time being since I’m working with
relatively small files (< 200kb) and I actually need another copy of the
file anyway to preserve the template. However, I’ll look into ruby-mapp
when I get more comfortable with all of this (I’m still begining with
ruby).
Thanks again :),
Peter
Giles B. wrote:
On 8/27/07, Peter M. [email protected] wrote:
I’m trying to find and replacace the string “placeholder” in a text
file. Any idea how I could get the following code to work?file = File.open('/folder/template.txt', 'r+') file.gsub!(/placeholder/, "word")Thanks,
Peter
Bunch of examples here:
–
Giles B.Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com/
On 8/28/07, Peter M. [email protected] wrote:
}
end
end, but my newbie assumptions were mistaken. Any ideas?
Nearly there though 
I think you can connect all the gsub’s together for that effect.
File.open(“source.txt”, “r”) do |src|
File.open(“sink.txt”, “w”) do |sink|
src.each_line { |line|
sink.write(line.gsub(/placeholder/,
“word”).gsub(/placeholder2/,“word2”))
}
end
end
You could also create a Hash for placeholder => word in case you have
a lot of things that needs to be changed.
J-H Johansen wrote:
You could also create a Hash for placeholder => word in case you have
a lot of things that needs to be changed.
Thanks J-H, that works fine. I do have a a lot of these however, so a
hash is probably the be the way to go. This is what I’ll be doing:
rehash = {
“placeholder” => “word”,
“placeholder2” => “other”,
}
File.open(‘test.txt’) do |file|
File.open(“sink.rtf”, “w”) do |sink|
while line = file.gets
sink.write line.gsub(/[#([^#]*)#]/){
rehash[$1]
}
end
end
end
On Aug 27, 8:53 pm, “Logan C.” [email protected] wrote:
Incidentily ruby has a shortcut for doing this:
ruby -inp -e ‘gsub!(/placeholder/, “word”)’ /folder/template.txt
To handle those really big files where you simply cannot afford to
have two copies simultaneously,
I think that Ruby makes a temporary copy of the file.
On Aug 27, 6:53 pm, “Logan C.” [email protected] wrote:
To handle those really big files where you simply cannot afford to
have two copies simultaneously, or don;t have the address space to map
the whole file into memory with mmap, you can read in fixed sized
chunks, modify them in memory and then write them back out. It’s a bit
more complicated than “fixed sized” chunks since the transformed text
may be smaller of larger than the original chunk.
The other thing to watch out for is if the search text spans chunks.
///ark