Retaining file permissions

[Jonathan I. Kamens]

In article <6039 at ptsfa.PacBell.COM>, jlwestm at PacBell.COM (Jeff Westman) writes:
|>         #  Replace one occurance with another
|>         
|>         print "Enter a \"from\" string:  \c" ;  read FROM
|>         print "Enter a \"to\"   string:  \c" ;  read TO
|>         
|>         sed s/$FROM/$TO/gp $i > xyzyx
|>         mv -f xyzyx $i

  Tom Christiansen has already posted a perl version, but (believe it or not
:-) it is possible to do it without perl (although perhaps not in one
process).  If you don't have perl installed, you can probably get what you
want by using "cp" in the last line instead of "mv", since cp attempts to keep
file permissions on existing files (although it won't be able to keep setuid
bits; then again, neither will perl).

  Tom's probably right that you want to change the "gp" in the sed command to
"g".  You probably also want to change "occurance" to "occurrence" :-).

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