CategoryComputingTips > PerlCompTips

Perl Tips

Oneliners

• Use perl -le '... print ...' instead of perl -e '... print ... ,"\n";' to get newlines. See man perl for the gory details about -l

• Use perl -i.bak with -pe something to modify text and a list of filenames for a safe way to try your perl on files e.g. perl -i.bak -pe 's/^bar/baz/' *

Documentation

• perldoc is actually useful:

  • perldoc -f function
  • perldoc modulek

• You can find module documentation for the latest versions on http://search.cpan.org/

rename

rename is bundled with perl and installed in all good perl installs

It's really useful as the syntax is

Usage: rename [-v] perlexpr [filenames]

So renaming multiple files according to a pattern becomes suddenly easy.

rename 'tr/A-Z/a-z/' *

rename 's/\.foo$/.bar/' *