Question

I have some document into which I want to add something at the beginning and at the end of each line. The original document looks like this:

firstLine
secondline

I want to turn it into this:

put 'firstLine';
put 'secondline';

By using the following Perl script, I can only turn it into this:

put 'firstLine';
';put 'secondline';

It seems that there is a $ at the end of the first line and at the beginning of the second line. Could someone help me to figure out what is wrong with the following Perl script?

use File::Find;
use strict;

my ($filename, @lines, $oldterm, $newterm);    #,$File::Find::name);
my $dir = ".";

open MYFILE, ">error.txt" or die $!;
find(\&edits, $dir);

sub edits() {
    $filename = $File::Find::name;
    if (grep(/\.txt$/, $filename)) {           #only process the perl files

        # open the file and read data
        # die with grace if it fails
        open(FILE, "<$filename") or die "Can't open $filename: $!\n";
        @lines = <FILE>;
        close FILE;

        # open same file for writing, reusing STDOUT
        open(STDOUT, ">$filename") or die "Can't open $filename: $!\n";

        # walk through lines, putting into $_, and substitute 2nd away
        for (@lines) {
            s/(&.+)/' "$1" '/ig;
            s/^/put '/ig;
            s/$/';/ig;
            print;
        }

        #Finish up
        close STDOUT;
    }
}

Answer 1

If you do it in one step you should have better luck. Something like:

s/^(&.+)$/put '$1';/im;