The utility 'fgres' has been a part of my Unix life since the early months of 1995, when I installed Slackware 95 for the first time (from a CD I got in the back of a book I bought at a local bookstore). Through the next 21 years, I've used fgres almost every day in my server administration duties and it is probably one of the least known utilities out there. I have no idea where I found it first but the author, one Wolfgang Stumvoll from Germany released it to the world in 1994. I made a VERY small modification to get it to compile on modern Linux (and FreeBSD). Click here to download the source for Fgres, version 1.5 (just extract it, run 'make' in the source directory and copy the binary where ever you want it).
-- Mitchell Vincent
-- K Software
fgres string replace utility for binary and text files/pipes
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Copyright (c) 1994, W. Stumvoll, Germany
Some legal stuff:
Use this software package at your own risk. The programmer cannot be held
liable for any incurred damages, directly or indirectly due to the use or
inability to use this software.
You are encouraged to distribute this package freely. This package is however
not to be sold (minor transfer costs excepted) or included in any commercially
sold software package (if you want to do this anyway, contact me (address
below), and we'll work something out).
If you distribute it, please leave the package intact. You are allowed to take
parts from this distribution and distribute these separately as long as you
retain the copyright messages. If you redistribute any part of this package in
a modified form, be sure to mark the parts you changed. If you have some
important changes that might be useful to the rest of the world, contact me
instead.
stumvoll@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Sadly, this address hasn't worked in years.)
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Submitted-By: stumvoll@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Wolfgang Stumvoll) (again, this is an inactive email address)
Archive-Name: fgres/part01
Environment: ANSI-C, UNIX
fgres' ( Fast GREp and Substitute ) primary function is to substitute or delete
character patterns. It can operate on binary and text files or in a pipe.
It is ideally suited for quick and dirty replacements in multiple files.
Especially for this purpose, fgres supports in situ replacements, which do not
need any temporary files.
For example:
If you want to replace all variables `foo' by `foobar' in all your program
sources, a mere:
fgres foo foobar *.[ch]
will do.
The more demanding user can create fgres command files. They can contain any
number of substitution patterns which will be simultaneously searched for and
can be collected in named groups. These groups can be used to generate finite
automatons.
