NAME

       inplace - emulate sed/perl/ruby in-place editing

SYNOPSIS

       gawk -i inplace ...

DESCRIPTION

       The  inplace  extension  adds two functions named inplace_begin() and inplace_end().  These functions are
       meant to be invoked from the inplace.awk wrapper which is installed when gawk is.

       By default, each named file on the command line is replaced with a  new  file  of  the  same  name  whose
       contents  are the results of running the AWK program.  Since a new file is created, if the file is a link
       (whether hard or symbolic), the link will be broken.  This behavior is consistent with GNU sed which also
       breaks links when the -i or --in-place flag is  used.   If  the  user  supplies  an  AWK  variable  named
       inplace::suffix  in  a  BEGIN  rule  or on the command line, then the inplace extension concatenates that
       suffix onto the original filename and uses the result as a filename for renaming the original.

       For backwards compatibility, the variable will also check INPLACE_SUFFIX (in the awk namespace)  for  the
       suffix to use if inplace::suffix is not set.

       One  can  disable  inplace  editing selectively by placing inplace::enable=0 on the command line prior to
       files that should be processed normally.  One can reenable inplace editing by  placing  inplace::enable=1
       prior to files that should be subject to inplace editing.

BUGS

       While  the  extension does attempt to preserve ownership and permissions, it makes no attempt to copy the
       ACLs from the original file.

       If the program dies prematurely, as might happen if an unhandled signal is received, a temporary file may
       be left behind.

EXAMPLE

       gawk -i inplace 'script' files ...
       gawk -i inplace -f scriptfile files ...

SEE ALSO

       GAWK: Effective AWK Programming,  filefuncs(3am),  fnmatch(3am),  fork(3am),  ordchr(3am),  readdir(3am),
       readfile(3am), revoutput(3am), rwarray(3am).

AUTHOR

       Andrew Schorr, schorr@telemetry-investments.com.

COPYING PERMISSIONS

       Copyright © 2012, 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2024, Free Software Foundation, Inc.

       Permission  is  granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual page provided the copyright
       notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

       Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual page under  the  conditions
       for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
       permission notice identical to this one.

       Permission  is  granted  to  copy  and distribute translations of this manual page into another language,
       under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated  in  a
       translation approved by the Foundation.

Free Software Foundation                           Feb 29 2024                                      INPLACE(3am)