Hello, I'd like to use

perl -pi.bak -e 's/OLDSTRING/NEWSTRING/g' FILELIST

to replace strings that contain newlines, say I have files
that look like

1
2
3

and I want to make them look like

4
5
6

I'd like to be able to do something like

perl -pi.bak -e 's/1.*3/4\n5\n6/g' *

But that doesn't work without .* being able to match newlines.  I
think this is accomplished by setting $* to a nonzero value, but
I'm not sure how to do that on the command line.  Multiple -e's
don't seem to work.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

 [courtesy cc of this posting sent to cited author via email]

In comp.lang.perl.misc,

:Hello, I'd like to use
:
:perl -pi.bak -e 's/OLDSTRING/NEWSTRING/g' FILELIST
:
:to replace strings that contain newlines, say I have files
:that look like
:
:1
:2
:3
:
:and I want to make them look like
:
:4
:5
:6
:
:I'd like to be able to do something like
:
:perl -pi.bak -e 's/1.*3/4\n5\n6/g' *
:
:But that doesn't work without .* being able to match newlines.  I
:think this is accomplished by setting $* to a nonzero value, but
:I'm not sure how to do that on the command line.  Multiple -e's
:don't seem to work.
:
:Any suggestions?

Learn about

    perl -00

and the

    s/foo/bar/s
    s/foo/bar/m
    s/foo/bar/sm

flags.

--tom
--

:       I've tried (in vi) "g/[a-z]\n[a-z]/s//_/"...but that doesn't
: cut it.  Any ideas?  (I take it that it may be a two-pass sort of solution).