Need a script to edit many files

Do you mean you want to edit the file contents or do you mean you want to rename the files themselves?

I want to edit the file contents

The following little script should do the job for you.

Put all the filenames in a text file FILELIST (with path)

#!/bin/ksh
for i in `cat $1` ; do
    sed 's/LABQDV/LAB/' $i > $i.$$
    mv $i.$$ $i
done

  save the above script as chfile, chmod u+x

  to use it:
  ./chfile FILELIST

  You can modify the script or just use command line to do
the job.

  eg. you want to change all the *.txt in dir1,
      cd dir1
      for i in `ls *.txt` ; do
            sed 's/LABQDV/LAB/' $i > $i.$$
            mv $i.$$ $i
      done

cheers!
 =============
yuzh

All my test files are a size of zero now.  I cut and pasted what you had

here's what I have

#!/bin/ksh
     for i in `cat $1` ; do
           sed 's/LABQDV/LAB/' $i > $i.$$
           mv $i.$$ $i
     done

Actaully I think I know why it did work.  

All my files, when opened up in vi, have incomplete last line.  S each file is not terminated by a new line character.

Is there a way around this.

The man page for sed says it ignores lines that aren't terminated by a new line character.

Thanks

mboss

that should be...

Actaully I think I know why it DIDN'T work

Can you please tell me which favour of UNIX are you using, and the contains of you FILELIST.

The little works find under Solaris 7/8 (SPARC)

The to do the followings :

#!/bin/ksh
for i in `cat $1` ; do
   sed 's/LABQDV/LAB/' $i > ${i}.tmp
   mv ${i}.tmp $i
done

 

The problem is that all my files are one long line that isn't ended with a new line character.  sed doesn't read a line in that isn't terminated by a new line character.

Is there a way around this problem?

I'm on HPUX 11

What about a quick and dirty 'C' program to accomplish the same thing?

quick and dirt shell ...

#!/usr/bin/ksh

for i in "$@" ; do
  ( cat "$i" ; echo ) | sed 's/LABQDV/LAB/' > ".$i.t" &&
    mv "$i" ".$i.o" && ln ".$i.t" "$i" && rm -f ".$i.t"
done

This will end up putting a newline after the last line read, which may leave a blank line at the end of each file.

It should leave the originals file intact but renamed (use ls -a).