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, and the man pages for the other
extensions shipped with gawk.

AUTHOR

Andrew Schorr, schorr@telemetry-investments.com.

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