INPLACE(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual INPLACE(1) NAME inplace -- edits files in-place through given filter commands SYNOPSIS inplace [-DLfinstvz] [-b suffix] -e commandline [[-e commandline] ...] [file ...] inplace [-DLfinstvz] [-b suffix] commandline [file ...] DESCRIPTION The inplace command is a utility to edit files in-place through given filter commands preserving the original file attributes. Mode and owner- ship (user and group) are preserved by default, and time (access and mod- ification) by choice. Depending on where to make a temporary file to replace the corresponding original file, the inode number may change after replacement. To prevent this, specify the -i option and the inode number of each edited file will be preserved. As for filter commands, a single command may be specified as the first argument to inplace. Multiple commands may be specified by using the -e option. There are some cases where inplace does not replace a file, such as when: 1. The original file is not writable (use -f to force editing against read-only files) 2. A filter command fails and exits with a non-zero return code 3. The resulted output is identical to the original file 4. The resulted output is empty (use -z to accept empty output) OPTIONS The following command line arguments are supported: -h --help Show help and exit. -D --debug Turn on debug output. -L --dereference By default, inplace ignores non-regular files including symlinks, but this switch makes it deref- erence each symlink using realpath(3) and edit the original file. -b SUFFIX --backup-suffix SUFFIX Create a backup file with the given suffix for each file. Note that backup files will be written over existing files, if any. -e COMMANDLINE --execute COMMANDLINE Specify a filter command line to run for each file in which the following placeholders can be used: %0 replaced by the original file path %1 replaced by the source file path %2 replaced by the destination file path %% replaced by `%' Missing %2 indicates %1 is modified destructively, and missing both %1 and %2 implies ``(...) < %1 > %2'' around the command line. The destination file is always an empty temporary file, and the source file is either the original file or a temporary copy file. Every temporary file has the same suffix as the original file, so that file name aware programs can play nicely with it. Placed file paths will be properly shell escaped with \'s as necessary. Instead of specifying a whole command line, you can use a command alias defined in a configuration file, ~/.inplace. The configuration file syntax is the usual: o Each alias definition is a name/value pair sep- arated with an ``='', one per line. o White spaces at the beginning or the end of a line, and around assignment separators (``='') are stripped off. o Lines starting with a ``#'' are ignored. This option can be specified many times, and they will be executed in sequence. A file is only replaced if all of them succeeds. See the EXAMPLES section below for details. -f --force By default, inplace does not perform editing if a file is not writable. This switch makes it force editing even if a file to process is read-only. -i --preserve-inode Make sure to preserve the inode number of each file. -n --dry-run Do not perform any destructive operation and just show what would have been done. This switch implies -v. -s --same-directory Create a temporary file in the same directory as each replaced file. This may speed up the perfor- mance when the directory in question is on a parti- tion that is fast enough and the system temporary directory is slow. Another reason to use this switch is when the tem- porary directory does not have sufficient disk space for a resulted file. If this option is specified, edited files will have newly assigned inode numbers. To prevent this, use the -i option. -t --preserve-timestamp Preserve the access and modification times of each file. -v --verbose Turn on verbose mode. -z --accept-empty By default, inplace does not replace the original file when a resulted file is empty in size. This switch makes it accept empty (zero-sized) output and replace the original file with it. EXAMPLES o Sort files in-place using sort(1): inplace sort file1 file2 file3 Below is the same thing as above, except for passing input files via the command line argument: inplace 'sort %1 > %2' file1 file2 file3 o Perform in-place charset conversion and newline code conversion: inplace -e 'iconv -f EUC-JP -t UTF-8' -e 'perl -pe "s/$/\\r/"' file1 file2 file3 o Process image files taking backup files: inplace -b.orig 'convert -rotate 270 -resize 50%% %1 %2' *.jpg o Perform a mass MP3 tag modification without changing timestamps: find mp3/Some_Artist -name '*.mp3' -print0 | xargs -0 inplace -te 'mp3info -a "Some Artist" -g "Progressive Rock" %1' As you see above, inplace makes a nice combo with find(1) and xargs(1). FILES ~/.inplace Location of the configuration file. ENVIRONMENT TMPDIR TMP TEMP Temporary directory candidates where inplace attempts to create intermediate output files, in that order. If none is available and writable, /tmp is used. If -s is specified, they will not be used. SEE ALSO find(1), xargs(1), realpath(3) AUTHORS Akinori MUSHA <knu@iDaemons.org> BUGS There may be. Use at your own risk. FreeBSD April 7, 2004 FreeBSD