Edit files using ex

Short note #2

I had a lot of text files (Markdown as it happens) which all needed exactly the same edit.
It was a simple edit, go to line 4, join it with next line and remove a couple of characters.
Very tedious to do manually, enter ex.

$ find . -name \*.md -exec ex -s +5 -c - -c j -c "s/\" T08/T08/" -cx {} \; -print

The find gathered up all the files with md extension and ran ex against each one, printing the filename as it went.
ex options are as follows:

  -s    Silent mode
  +5    Go to line 5
  -c -  Move up one line ('course could just have gone to line 4)
  -c j  Join line with next one
  -c "s Search and replace
  -cx   Save and exit

There can be up to 10 commands (using -c) on the command line.

It would have been possible to do the same thing using either sed or awk but using ex is nice and simple.