On 3/26/06, Shane Stixrud <shane@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Sed is a wonderful tool, but it is highly limited by the fact its user > must take into account whole file(s) for each expression, this is further > complicated when one must consider the file may change over time. The > complexity and readability of regular expression tools is much higher than > should be required to change OS/application variables. > > Creating new files or appending to the end of existing files with "echo" > only takes one so far. This also tends to have the cost of hurting > readability as it is often the case you would prefer putting data > somewhere else in the file (i.e. sed). > > The nature of flat configuration files where each application has its own > format is such where recovery and/or applying changes only if they have > not been already applied is too complex and hurts readability far to much > to be attempted in a simple shell script. > One tool I did not see you list is `patch`. A context diff can still work even when the file has changed significantly, and the format is extremely readable (just + or -.) Maintaining a collection of diffs is going to be significantly easier to manage than dealing with a large number of cp/mv/echo/sed commands in shell files. There are also a variety of tools made to deal with diffs and can show them in graphical, friendly ways. There might be a good reason not to use diff/patch for doing what you want, but I think that it could save a few headaches. n0dalus. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
