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Well duh, that's exactly what sed is designed to do. And nowadays most implementations have the handy -i option that makes changes in place without explicitly using an interim file. Which means that I could reduce the work of typing in the Perl script to a single line at the command prompt...

There is one Unix command that most have yet to master.

Following is an excerpt from Masterminds of Programming, by Federico Biancuzzi and Shane Warden. (Adapted for the web). The Unix philosophy of many small tools, powerful in their combination, is evident in the AWK programming language. Its inventors (Al Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan) describe it as a language for syntax-driven pattern matching. Its straightforward syntax and clever selection of useful features make it easy to slice and dice text through one-liners without having to understand parsers and grammars and finite automata. Though its inspiration has spread to general-purpose languages such as Perl, any modern Unix box still has AWK installed and quietly, effectively, working away.

Youthful indiscretions, trysts, dalliances? Programmer and writer Thomas Scoville has had them with every OS from VMS, MVS, and CP/M. He even admits to a short-lived infatuation with Windows. But he's always returned to his one true love, UNIX.

I take minutes in two conference calls every week. Every call starts at the same time -- I look up the number in my calendar, dial the phone, then launch a Vim instance. I've written a few Vim macros to...