INPLACE(1) BSD General Commands Manual INPLACE(1)NAMEinplace — edits files in-place through given filter commands
SYNOPSISinplace [-DLfinstvz] [-b suffix] -e commandline [[-e commandline] ...]
[file ...]
inplace [-DLfinstvz] [-b suffix] commandline [file ...]
DESCRIPTION
The inplace command is a utility to edit files in-place through given
filter commands preserving the original file attributes. Mode and owner‐
ship (user and group) are preserved by default, and time (access and mod‐
ification) by choice.
Inode numbers will change by default, but there is a -i option with which
given the inode number of each edited file will be preserved.
As for filter commands, a single command may be specified as the first
argument to inplace. To pass many filter commands, specify each followed
by the -e option.
There are some cases where inplace does not replace a file, such as when:
1. The original file is not writable (use -f to force editing
against read-only files)
2. A filter command fails and exits with a non-zero return code
3. The resulted output is identical to the original file
4. The resulted output is empty (use -z to accept empty output)
OPTIONS
The following command line arguments are supported:
-h
--help Show help and exit.
-D
--debug Turn on debug output.
-L
--dereference By default, inplace ignores non-regular files
including symlinks, but this switch makes it
resolve (dereference) each symlink using real‐
path(3) and edit the original file.
-b SUFFIX
--backup-suffix SUFFIX
Create a backup file with the given suffix for each
file. Note that backup files will be written over
existing files, if any.
-e COMMANDLINE
--execute COMMANDLINE
Specify a filter command line to run for each file
in which the following placeholders can be used:
%0 replaced by the original file
path, shell escaped with \'s as
necessary
%1 replaced by the source file path,
shell escaped with \'s as neces‐
sary
%2 replaced by the destination file
path, shell escaped with \'s as
necessary
%% replaced by ‘%’
Omission of %2 indicates %1 should be modified
destructively, and omission of both %1 and %2
implies “(...) < %1 > %2” around the command line.
When the filter command is run, the destination
file is always an empty temporary file, and the
source file is either the original file or a tempo‐
rary copy file.
Every temporary file has the same suffix as the
original file, so that file name aware programs can
play nicely with it.
Instead of specifying a whole command line, you can
use a command alias defined in a configuration
file, ~/.inplace. See the FILES section for the
file format.
This option can be specified many times, and they
will be executed in sequence. A file is only
replaced if all of them succeeds.
See the EXAMPLES section below for details.
-f
--force By default, inplace does not perform editing if a
file is not writable. This switch makes it force
editing even if a file to process is read-only.
-i
--preserve-inode Make sure to preserve the inode number of each
file.
-n
--dry-run Do not perform any destructive operation and just
show what would have been done. This switch
implies -v.
-s
--same-directory Create a temporary file in the same directory as
each replaced file. This may speed up the perfor‐
mance when the directory in question is on a parti‐
tion that is fast enough and the system temporary
directory is slow.
This switch can be effectively used when the tempo‐
rary directory does not have sufficient disk space
for a resulted file.
If this option is specified, edited files will have
newly assigned inode numbers. To prevent this, use
the -i option.
-t
--preserve-timestamp Preserve the access and modification times of each
file.
-v
--verbose Turn on verbose mode.
-z
--accept-empty By default, inplace does not replace the original
file when a resulted file is empty in size because
it is likely that there is a mistake in the filter
command. This switch makes it accept empty (zero-
sized) output and replace the original file with
it.
EXAMPLES
· Sort files in-place using sort(1):
inplace sort file1 file2 file3
Below works the same as above, passing each input file via the com‐
mand line argument:
inplace 'sort %1 > %2' file1 file2 file3
· Perform in-place charset conversion and newline code conversion:
inplace-e 'iconv -f EUC-JP -t UTF-8' -e 'perl -pe "s/$/\\r/"'
file1 file2 file3
· Process image files taking backup files:
inplace-b.orig 'convert -rotate 270 -resize 50%% %1 %2' *.jpg
· Perform a mass MP3 tag modification without changing timestamps:
find mp3/Some_Artist -name '*.mp3' -print0 | xargs -0inplace-te 'mp3info -a "Some Artist" -g "Progressive Rock" %1'
As you see above, inplace makes a nice combo with find(1) and
xargs(1).
FILES
~/.inplace The configuration file, which syntax is described as follows:
· Each alias definition is a name/value pair separated with
an “=”, one per line.
· White spaces at the beginning or the end of a line, and
around assignment separators (“=”) are stripped off.
· Lines starting with a “#” are ignored.
ENVIRONMENT
TMPDIR
TMP
TEMP Temporary directory candidates where inplace attempts to create
intermediate output files, in that order. If none is available
and writable, /tmp is used. If -s is specified, they will not be
used.
SEE ALSOfind(1), xargs(1), realpath(3)AUTHORS
Akinori MUSHA ⟨knu@iDaemons.org⟩
BUGSinplace cannot always preserve timestamps in full precision depending on
the ruby interpreter and the platform that inplace runs on, that is, ruby
1.9 and later supports timestamps in nanoseconds but setting file time‐
stamps in nanosecond precision is only possible if the platform supports
utimensat(2).
So, a problem can arise if the file system supports nanoseconds, like
ext4 and ZFS, but the platform does not have the system call to set time‐
stamps in nanoseconds, like Linux < 2.6.22, glibc < 2.6 and FreeBSD, that
the sub-microsecond part of a timestamp cannot be preserved.
FreeBSD November 22, 2012 FreeBSD
