perl regex find & replace

Question

I am trying to remove some garbage js code on 4k+ webpages. The webpages have other js on the page as well so I need to only get rid of the JS with a particular function called clickIE.

I have this one liner working until I introduce the regex...

perl -p -i -e 's|<script(.*)>.*clickie.*?<\/script>|<\!--REMOVED-JS-CODE-->|gixsm' ./*.html

My regex works correctly when tested at http://www.gskinner.com/RegExr/ but fails on the command line...(fails meaning... the regex doesnt match anything)

Why are you using greedy instead of lazy matching? What specifically do you mean by "fails"? — Mark Byers
– Mark Byers, Commented Dec 18, 2011 at 7:47
@MarkByers your suggestion tightened it up. Thanks. Its working just fine when I test it at gskinner.com/RegExr. When I run it from the command line it doesn't do the replacement. perl -p -i -e 's|<script(.*?)>.*?clickie.*?<\/script>|<\!--REMOVED-JS-CODE-->|gixsm' ./*.html — jriddle
– jriddle, Commented Dec 18, 2011 at 8:05
This trips over <script>console.log("clickie")</script>. Admittedly, it's unlikely that you'll find 'clickie' in quotes anywhere in the sources you're looking at, but in the general case that may be less likely. Fixing this safely involves using a javascript parser to only find cases where the target string is being used as a function name, which is a somewhat harder problem. — Piers Cawley
– Piers Cawley, Commented Dec 19, 2011 at 11:03

Zaid · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-18 08:06:31Z

3

For the regex to work, the entire file needs to be slurped in at once.

$ perl -0777 -pi -e 's/your/regex/gix' ./*.html

answered Dec 18, 2011 at 8:06

Zaid

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2 Comments

TLP Over a year ago

+1 Foiled me by 1 minute again, with the exact solution I was going to suggest. =P You may need to keep the flags, though.

Zaid Over a year ago

@TLP : There is always one more way to do it ;)

dschultz · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-18 08:03:02Z

0

As noted by @Mark the matches should be non-greedy. This seems to work...

perl -i -p -e 's|<script.*?>.*?clickie.*?</script>|<!-- removed -->|gism'

answered Dec 18, 2011 at 8:03

dschultz

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