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Perl CLI Tips for Developers

Perl provides command line options to allow simple tasks like searching/replacing text in files or running perl code without writing a full script. Common options include '-e' to run code, '-p' to process files line by line, and '-i' for in-place editing. Variables and output from shell commands can be embedded within perl command lines to link files based on a list or rename files from a pipeline. The '-0777' option can treat a file as a single line to add line numbers. System commands with single quotes prevent variable substitution so values can be passed between a perl script and command line.

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152 views2 pages

Perl CLI Tips for Developers

Perl provides command line options to allow simple tasks like searching/replacing text in files or running perl code without writing a full script. Common options include '-e' to run code, '-p' to process files line by line, and '-i' for in-place editing. Variables and output from shell commands can be embedded within perl command lines to link files based on a list or rename files from a pipeline. The '-0777' option can treat a file as a single line to add line numbers. System commands with single quotes prevent variable substitution so values can be passed between a perl script and command line.

Uploaded by

Junchao Chen
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Perl Command-Line Options

It might be troublesome to write perl program for each task, perl command line is a better option for simple tasks.
Below are a few examples:

1) 'Hello world'
 perl -e 'print "Hello World\n"'
 Note: Option '-e' allows you to run perl in command line

2) Simple in-place search and replace


 Replace all 'five' with '5' for all lines in the file ‘test.txt’
perl -p -i -e 's/five/5/g' test.txt
 remove ^M in file
perl -p -i -e 's/\r//g' filename
 Note: Option '-p -i -e' is usually used together for file in-place editing line by line
Option '-p' allows perl to process the file line by line
Option '-i' allows perl to do in-place editing

3) Embed shell command into perl command line


 link all files whose names are inside file_list from folder 'temp' to current folder.
perl -n -e 'if(/(\w+)/) { `ln -s temp/$1 .` ;}' file_list
 Note:
 Option '-n -e' is usually used together for file processing (non in-place editing) line by line

4) Pipeline shell command with perl command line to process multiple files
 Rename all files whose name end with "_old.s" to "_new.s", i.e. test_old.s to test_new.s
ls *_old.s | perl -n -e 'if (/(\w+)_old\.s/) {`mv ${1}_old.s ${1}_new.s`}'
 Rename all files whose name end with
grep new file* -l | perl -n -e 'if(/(\w+)/) {`perl -p -i -e 's/new/old/' $1`}'

5) Perl command line with evaluation


 Prepend line numbers to all lines start with digit
perl -0777 -p -i -e '$num=-1;s/\n(\d+)/$num++;"\nline$num $1"/eg' test

for example:
original file:
// comment 0
// comment 1
0001100
0001000
//comment 2
new file:
// comment 0
// comment 1
line0 0001100
line1 0001000
//comment 2

 Note:
 '/e' is used for evaluation
 option '-0777' is used to treat the whole file content as a single line with new line in original file as '\n'
 The replacement text should always be in double quote 's/\n(\d+)/$num++;"\nline$num $1"/eg'
6) Perl command line inside perl script
 Perl script will perform one round of variable replacement before perl command line. To prevent perl script from
performing variable replacement, system command with single quote should be used
system("perl", "-p", "-i", "-e", 's!feature inst_(\d+)\.(I\d+ trans)!feature inst_$1\.'.$lut_feature_add.'!', '--',
'uut_and_err_subuut_2.mif');
 Note:
 Single quote is used around 's!!!'
 $1 will not be replaced by perl script, $1 will refer to matched content '(\d+)' in perl command line
 In order to pass variable from perl script to perl command line: need to place variable outside single quote and
join with dot '.', i.e. 's!aaa!'.$variable.'bbb!'
 Delimiters 's!!!' is used instead of 's///'or 's{}{}' to avoid error when file containing '/' or '{}'

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