🚀 go-pugleaf

Melman@uiuc.edu (Melvin Wilson) writes:
: Help!
: 
: I have a very simple (and for the more experienced, stupid) question.
: 
: From the command prompt on a NeXT how could I search a text file and remove  
: every instance of a particular expression in that text file?  I've tried but 
: cannot figure out the apropriate format of the command.
: 

the two ways that come immediately to mind are to use the Unix batch
editor, called "sed" and its -d option to remove multicharacter 
expressions.  See the man pages for sed (or any good Unix book).  

If all you want to do is to remove a particular character (such as the
infamous ^M s which come from DOS files, then it's probably even easier
to use the Unix command "tr" (for "translate characters", see the man pages
for tr) and it's -d option to eliminate the characters.  For example, 
if you have a file called testfile wiht ^M s in it

>>>>>>tesfile<<<<<<<<

The rain in spain falls mainly on the plain.^M

The rain in spain falls mainly down the drain.^M


then the command 

tr -d '\015' <testfile  >outfile  

will remove the ^M s (which have character code \015)

>>>>>>>outfile<<<<<<<<<<<

The rain in spain falls mainly on the plain.

The rain in spain falls mainly down the drain.

Again, see the man pages for whichever is appropriate or drop me
a note containing the specific example. (Personal opinion:  "sed"
is like a microwave, i.e. it's one of those things you can get 
through life easily without, but once you have learned about it your
life is much better).  

Hope this is Helpful 

tom