preserving file permissions on search+replace

Friday 1 August 2008 00:01, Grant wrote:

Hi there,
>
I have a couple problems with a bash script on linux: a) not preserving
permissions, and b) overwriting a symlink (although I can avoid this by
using the symlink target).
>
script:
>
#!/bin/bash
#
[ $1 = "" ] && echo "Usage: $0 filename" && exit
>
tmp=$(mktemp) || exit
>
awk ' /search_term/ { sub(/search_term/, "replace_term") }
1' $1 $tmp && mv $tmp $1

Try with

cp "$1" "$tmp"
awk '' "$tmp" "$1"

--
All the commands are tested with bash and GNU tools, so they may use
nonstandard features. I try to mention when something is nonstandard (if
I'm aware of that), but I may miss something. Corrections are welcome.