CODEWITHSUNDEEP
perl
user1227914
user1227914

Reputation: 3514

why is my perl command line replace not working?

I'm running this but it doesn't seem to replace anything:

perl -p -i -e 's/page?user_id=/page?uid=/g' *

What am I doing wrong here?

I want to replace page?user_id= with page?uid=

Upvotes: 1

Views: 226

Answers (2)

bytepusher
bytepusher

Reputation: 1578

The '?' is a special character, indicating that the e needs to be matched 0 or once, so it needs to be escaped if you want to search for a '?' instead of an optional 'e'. Escaping with '\':

try

s/page\?user_id=/page?uid=/g

Upvotes: 5

Arunesh Singh
Arunesh Singh

Reputation: 3535

You can also use Quotemeta:

perl -pi -e 's/\Qpage?user_id=\E/page?uid=/g' file

As a side note I thought why don't you change only user_id to uid.

Upvotes: 3

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