Re: conditional replace

["Patrick Donnelly" <batrick.donnelly@...>]

On 9/17/07, Thomas A. Schmitz <thomas.schmitz@uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> But how do I write the rest of the file back? Sorry if this is a
> nobrainer, but I'm certainly not a programmer.

It would probably be better to just let everything be done via stdin
and stdout, using pipes:

========

#!/usr/local/bin/lua

file = io.stdin:read("*all");

file = string.gsub(file, "localgreek(%b{})", function(lines)
      return "localgreek"..string.gsub(lines, 'a', 'b');
    end);

io.stdout:write(file);

=======

You will probably want to have the "return "localgreek" ..." part of
the code just call a function which iterates over your table of
substitutions for each capture. Notice that you need the "localgreek"
part concatenated otherwise you lose it.

HTH,

-- 
-Patrick Donnelly

"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing
to do and always a clever thing to say."

-Will Durant