writing to a text file

fizzik · Post by **fizzik** » Sat Jun 15, 2002 3:27 am

i am NEW to tcl scripting, i am trying to create a script that users can search and delete items from a separate file containing the items, i have the searching part worked out, i am having trouble with the deleting of items. each item is on a separate line. is there anyway of deleting a line in tcl? Because currently i am overwriting the line and in a lot of cases this causes the next line to be messed up because i don't know how to overwrite the exact amount of characters in the line i want to kill. Could some one please see if they understand what im saying, and if you coul kick me in the right direction i would REALLY appreciate it.

cheers

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: fizzik on 2002-06-15 01:29 ]</font>

Wcc · Post by **Wcc** » Sat Jun 15, 2002 4:18 am

You can't delete a line directly with Tcl. You need to read the entire file, remove the line, and rewrite the file.

Wcc

Petersen · Post by **Petersen** » Sat Jun 15, 2002 9:52 am

yup, which personally I try to avoid when I can - the unix standard utils (grep, sed, cut and the like) tend to be quicker for large files

stdragon · Post by **stdragon** » Sun Jun 16, 2002 7:22 am

We should make a little fileutil.tcl that has all these commonly used functions in them. People seem to ask several main questions:

how do I read a random line

how do I delete a line

how do I search for a line

how do I read all the lines into a list

how do I insert a line at the (beginning|end)

But I guess these are the same people who are too lazy to search for the answers that have already been given. They probably wouldn't bother getting the file.

fizzik · Post by **fizzik** » Mon Jun 17, 2002 1:15 am

thanks for the replies. stdragon, i have searched EXTENSIVELY looking for a answer but i obviously dont know what to search for, could you please give me a pointer on what to search for? thanks.