NAME

File::Inplace - Perl module for in-place editing of files

SYNOPSIS

  use File::Inplace;

  my $editor = new File::Inplace(file => "file.txt");
  while (my ($line) = $editor->next_line) {
    $editor->replace_line(reverse $line);
  }
  $editor->commit;

DESCRIPTION

File::Inplace is a perl module intended to ease the common task of editing a file in-place. Inspired by variations of perl's -i option, this module is intended for somewhat more structured and reusable editing than command line perl typically allows. File::Inplace endeavors to guarantee file integrity; that is, either all of the changes made will be saved to the file, or none will. It also offers functionality such as backup creation, automatic field splitting per-line, automatic chomping/unchomping, and aborting edits partially through without affecting the original file.

CONSTRUCTOR

File::Inplace offers one constructor that accepts a number of parameters, one of which is required.

File::Inplace->new(file => "filename", ...)

file: The one required parameter. This is the name of the file to edit.
suffix: The suffix for backup files. If not specified, no backups are made.
chomp: If set to zero, then automatic chomping will not be performed. Newlines (actually, the contents of $/) will remain in strings returned from "next_line". Additionally, the contents of $/ will not be appended when replacing lines.
regex: If specified, then each line will be split by this parameter when using "next_line_split" method. If unspecified, then this defaults to \s+.
separator: The default character used to join each line when replace_line is invoked with a list instead of a single value. Defaults to a single space.

INSTANCE METHODS

$editor->next_line (): In scalar context, it returns the next line of the input file, or undef if there is no line. In an array context, it returns a single value of the line, or an empty list if there is no line.
$editor->replace_line (value): Replaces the current line in the output file with the specified value. If passed a list, then each valie is joined by the "separator" specified at construction time.
$editor->next_line_split (): Line "next_line", except splits based on the "regex" specified in the constructor.
$editor->has_lines (): Returns true if the file contains any further lines.
$editor->all_lines (): Returns an array of all lines in the file being edited.
$editor->replace_all_lines (@lines): Replaces all remaining lines in the file with the specified @lines.
$editor->commit (): Completes the edit operation and saves the changes to the edited file.
$editor->rollback (): Aborts the edit process.
$editor->commit_to_backup (): Saves edits to the backup file instead of the original file.

AUTHOR

Chip Turner, <chipt@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.6.0 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.

POD ERRORS

Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:

Around line 283:: You forgot a '=back' before '=head1'
Around line 285:: '=item' outside of any '=over'