Search for a match, after the match is found take the number after the match and add 4 to it, it is posible in perl? - perl

Question

I am a beginer in perl and I need to modify a txt file by keeping all the previous data in it and only modify the file by adding 4 to every number related to a specific tag (< COMPRESSED-SIZE >). The file have many lines and tags and looks like below, I need to find all the < COMPRESSED-SIZE > tags and add 4 to the number specified near the tag:
< SOURCE-START-ADDRESS >01< /SOURCE-START-ADDRESS >
< COMPRESSED-SIZE >132219< /COMPRESSED-SIZE >
< UNCOMPRESSED-SIZE >229376< /UNCOMPRESSED-SIZE >
So I guess I need to do something like: search for the keyword(match) and store the number 132219 in a variable and add the second number (4) to it, replace the result 132219 with 132223, the rest of the file must remain unchanged, only the numbers related to this tag must change. I cannot search for the number instead of the tag because the number could change while the tag will remain always the same. I also need to find all the tags with this name and replace the numbers near them by adding 4 to them. I already have the code for finding something after a keyword, because I needed to search also for another tag, but this script does something else, adds a number in front of a keyword. I think I could use this code for what i need, but I do not know how to make the calculation and keep the rest of the file intact or if it is posible in perl.
while (my $row = <$inputFileHandler>)
{
if(index($row,$Data_Pattern) != -1){
my $extract = substr($row, index($row,$Data_Pattern) + length($Data_Pattern), length($row));
my $counter_insert = sprintf "%08d", $counter;
my $spaces = " " x index($row,$Data_Pattern);
$data_to_send ="what i need to add" . $extract;
print {$outs} $spaces . $Data_Pattern . $data_to_send;
$counter = $counter + 1;
}
else
{
print {$outs} $row;
next;
}
}
Maybe you could help me with a block of code for my needs, $Data_Pattern is the match. Thank you very much!

Answer 1

This is a classic one-liner Perl task. Basically you would do something like
$ perl -i.bak -pe's/^< COMPRESSED-SIZE >\K(\d+)/$1 + 4/e' yourfile.txt
Which will in essence copy and replace your file with a new, edited file. This can be very dangerous, especially if you are a Perl newbie. The -i switch is here used with the .bak extension which saves a backup in yourfile.txt.bak. This does not make this operation safe, however, as running the command twice will overwrite the backup.
It is advisable to make a separate backup of the target file before using this command.
-i.bak edit "in-place", the file is overwritten, a backup of the original is created with extension .bak.
-p argument is treated as a file name, which is read, and printed back.
s/ // the substitution operator, which is applied to all lines of the file.
^ inside the regex looks for beginning of line.
\K keep the match that is to the left.
(\d+) capture () 1 or more digits \d+ and store them in $1
/e treat the right hand side of the substitution operator as an expression and use the result as the replacement string. In this case it will increase your number and return the sum.
The long version of this command is
while (<>) {
s/^< COMPRESSED-SIZE >\K(\d+)/$1 + 4/e
}
Which can be placed in a file and run with the -i switch.