RFS: rrep
Dear mentors,
I am looking for a sponsor for my package "rrep".
* Package name : rrep
Version : 1.3.3-1
Upstream Author : Arno Onken <asnelt@asnelt.org>
* URL : http://sourceforge.net/projects/rrep/
* License : GPL
Section : utils
It builds these binary packages:
rrep - recursive pattern replacement utility
The package appears to be lintian clean.
The upload would fix these bugs: 636160
My motivation for maintaining this package is:
Replacing patterns in multiple files is a fairly common task which can
have a potentially disastrous outcome. I decided to write and package
rrep for this purpose, because the alternatives were not really
satisfying in terms of handling and function. In terms of handling, rrep
is like a mixture of sed and grep. If you know grep and a bit of sed
then you can also work with rrep.
Similar programs that are already in Debian are sed and rpl.
sed can be used to replace patterns in a single file. Together with find
and xargs multiple files can be processed. However, sed offers no
simulation or prompting modes which can be crucial for safely
replacing patterns in files. Moreover, sed together with xargs and find
cannot be used as comfortably as, for instance, grep to process multiple
files in a directory tree. For these reasons another program that is
similar to rrep was written before: rpl.
The most widespread program of this type is rpl. Originally, there was
only a proprietary implementation of rpl until a free replacement was
written for the Debian project in 2004. This replacement was written in
Python. Unlike sed or rrep, rpl has no support for referring to
sub-expressions in the replacement string. The command-line options of
rpl are not grep-like. Selection of multiple files subject to
constraints is not as versatile as for rrep. Unlike rrep, rpl does not
support all of the GNU backup options and there is no support for
internationalization. The documentation of rpl is not as detailed as
that of rrep.
http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/rpl
rrep has helped me numerous times to replace patterns reliably and
safely. I hope that it will also be useful to other people.
The package can be found on mentors.debian.net:
- URL: http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/r/rrep
- Source repository: deb-src http://mentors.debian.net/debian unstable
main contrib non-free
- dget http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/r/rrep/rrep_1.3.3-1.dsc
I would be glad if someone uploaded this package for me.
Kind regards
Arno Onken
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