Linux insert <br> utility?

[JDS]

Its like, get this big thick book, study it a few weeks and
start reinventing all those useful little wheels.
Why, you have nothing but time for that right?
Welcome to the Linux/Unix world. We've all been doing it
the hard way for 35 years and we aren't going to stop now.
Perl is even worse.

Look, I understand that you may be frustrated, but your rant here is just
ridiculous. It sounds like you are trying to use the "monolithic tools"
Windows/Apple OS philosophy in the "small tools" philosophy Unix world.

Pretty much every Unix-y system comes with all the tools you need to do
what you are asking to do, and any averge Unix user would know that. Now
you know it. So now you are closer to being an average Unix user.

The trouble, of course, is knowing what tools to use, but for what you
want you only need two.

Allrighty, don't get too frustrated. You once didn't know how to use
GUI-oriented monolithic programs either...

 

[JDS]

find /start/directory -name \*.txt | xargs perl -i.bak -p -n -e
's/\n/<br>\n/'

pipe to xargs? Why not just use the "-exec" flag for find?

 

[David Dorward]

pipe to xargs? Why not just use the "-exec" flag for find?

It would spawn a new perl process each time. Piping via args should be
slightly faster.