[H-GEN] Text Search and Replace @ shell prompt

Jason Parker-Burlingham jasonp at uq.net.au
Sun Aug 25 23:44:53 EDT 2002


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Greg Black <gjb at gbch.net> writes:

> I think it's better to get the problem specified than to provide
> all-singing answers that still run a real risk of not actually doing
> what's wanted.

Sadly I see too many people using the sort of thing you suggested,
thinking it's good enough, until of course they find out it's not.

Providing a partial solution is a good way to get the problem
specified---even if it means someone coming back and saying "well, no,
that didn't do <x> quite right".  I thought we were doing pretty much
the same thing, all told.

(Basically I think one can't beat the "don't use regexes on HTML" drum
too much, especially since there are much better tools; I stepped in
predominately because this sort of job was something I used to do on a
daily basis, and something you've recently said you don't.)

> The rest of the advice was, of course, sound.  I would probably
> have also mentioned the Emacs `query-replace-regexp' function as
> a way of doing it by hand that would be fairly painless.

Emacs macros could probably make short work of the job, too.

robi^H^H^H^Hjason
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| ``Ooooaah!                                                            |
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