[lug] simple text editing problem

[D. Stimits]

Daniel Webb wrote:
> Well, maybe it's simple...
> 
> I need to find and replace text from around 10,000 lines of c code in
> around 50 files in several directory trees.  I'm going to have to do this
> quite a few times, so the solution needs to be able to use "find" as the
> input for which files to load, or else remember from one day to the next
> which files I'm interested in.  Also, it has to be interactive, since I
> won't always be able to tell if I need to do the replace without context.
> 
> I have found many, many solutions that can do almost what I am describing
> above.  So far I have not found anything that can do all of that.
> Probably Emacs can do it, but I don't know Emacs yet.  I have tried
> cooledit, nedit, jedit, kdevelop, and several others.
> 
> Free/libre licensed solutions only please.
> 
> If such a thing doesn't exist I will implement it in Perl and release it.
> 

Closest you might get without having to learn much is perhaps Source 
Navigator (redhat now places it in RH 7.3). It has a grep/edit window 
that is very useful...you click on the top half search result and the 
file/line shows up in the bottom half. Using control-c to copy the first 
edit, you can use control-v on each line to paste. It also has standard 
search/replace, but that is not tied directly to the exact line in the 
grep/edit window.

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi.com