Usage

You probably will need to know the basics of the Python re module (regular expressions).

usage: massedit.py [-h] [-V] [-w] [-v] [-e EXPRESSIONS] [-f FUNCTIONS]
                   [-x EXECUTABLES] [-s START_DIRS] [-m MAX_DEPTH] [-o FILE]
                   [-g FILE] [--encoding ENCODING] [--newline NEWLINE]
                   [file pattern [file pattern ...]]

Python mass editor

positional arguments:
  file pattern          shell-like file name patterns to process or - to read
                        from stdin.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -V, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -w, --write           modify target file(s) in place. Shows diff otherwise.
  -v, --verbose         increases log verbosity (can be specified multiple
                        times)
  -e EXPRESSIONS, --expression EXPRESSIONS
                        Python expressions applied to target files. Use the
                        line variable to reference the current line.
  -f FUNCTIONS, --function FUNCTIONS
                        Python function to apply to target file. Takes file
                        content as input and yield lines. Specify function as
                        [module]:?<function name>.
  -x EXECUTABLES, --executable EXECUTABLES
                        Python executable to apply to target file.
  -s START_DIRS, --start START_DIRS
                        Directory(ies) from which to look for targets.
  -m MAX_DEPTH, --max-depth-level MAX_DEPTH
                        Maximum depth when walking subdirectories.
  -o FILE, --output FILE
                        redirect output to a file
  -g FILE, --generate FILE
                        generate stub file suitable for -f option
  --encoding ENCODING   Encoding of input and output files
  --newline NEWLINE     Newline character for output files

Examples:
# Simple string substitution (-e). Will show a diff. No changes applied.
massedit.py -e "re.sub('failIf', 'assertFalse', line)" *.py

# File level modifications (-f). Overwrites the files in place (-w).
massedit.py -w -f fixer:fixit *.py

# Will change all test*.py in subdirectories of tests.
massedit.py -e "re.sub('failIf', 'assertFalse', line)" -s tests test*.py

# Will transform virtual methods (almost) to MOCK_METHOD suitable for gmock (see https://github.com/google/googletest).
massedit.py -e "re.sub(r'\s*virtual\s+([\w:<>,\s&*]+)\s+(\w+)(\([^\)]*\))\s*((\w+)*)(=\s*0)?;', 'MOCK_METHOD(\g<1>, \g<2>, \g<3>, (\g<4>, override));', line)" gmock_test.cpp

If massedit is installed as a package (from pypi for instance), one can interact with it as a command line tool:

python -m massedit -e "re.sub('assertEquals', 'assertEqual', line)" test.py

Or as a library (command line option above to be passed as kewyord arguments):

>>> import massedit
>>> filenames = ['massedit.py']
>>> massedit.edit_files(filenames, ["re.sub('Jerome', 'J.', line)"])

Lastly, there is a convenient massedit.bat wrapper for Windows included in the distribution.

Installation

Download massedit.py from http://github.com/elmotec/massedit or :

python -m pip install massedit

Poor man source-to-source manipulation

I find myself using massedit mostly for source to source modification of large code bases like this:

First create a fixer.py python module with the function that will process your source code. For instance, to add a header:

def add_header(lines, file_name):
    yield '// This is my header'  # will be the first line of the file.
    for line in lines:
        yield line

Adds the location of fixer.py to your $PYTHONPATH, then simply call massedit.py like this:

massedit.py -f fixer:add_header *.h

You can add the -s . option to process all the .h files reccursively.

Plans

• Add support for 3rd party tool (e.g. autopep8) to process the files.

• Add support for a file of expressions as an argument to allow multiple modification at once.

• Find a satisfactory way (ie. easy to use) to handle multiline regex as the current version works on a line by line basis.

Rationale

• I have a hard time practicing more than a few dialects of regular expressions.

• I need something portable to Windows without being bothered by eol.

• I believe Python is the ideal tool to build something more powerful than simple regex based substitutions.

Background

I have been using runsed and checksed (from Unix Power Tools) for years and did not find a good substitute under Windows until I came across Graham Fawcett python recipe 437932 on ActiveState. It inspired me to write the massedit.

The core was fleshed up a little, and here we are. If you find it useful and enhance it please, do not forget to submit patches. Thanks!

If you are more interested in awk-like tool, you probably will find pyp a better alternative.

Contributing

To set things up for development, please pip-install massedit as shown below. It will install it in editable mode and the develop extra packages, including commitizen that is recommended to have commits follow conventional commits convention:

python -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install -e .[develop,test]

License

Licensed under the term of MIT License. See attached file LICENSE.txt.

Changes

See CHANGELOG.md for changes later than 0.69.0

0.69.1 (2023-09-10)

Updated infrastructure files to setup.cfg/pyproject.toml instead of setup.py. Thanks @isidroas.

0.69.0 (2020-12-22)

Also moved CI to github workflows from travis and added regression tests for Python 2.7.

0.68.6 (2019-12-02)

Added support for Python 3.8, stdin input via - argument. Documented regex to turn base classes into googlemock MOCK_METHOD.

0.68.5 (2019-04-13)

Added –newline option to force newline output. Thanks @ALFNeT!

0.68.4 (2017-10-24)

Fixed bug that would cause changes to be missed when the -w option is ommited. Thanks @tgoodlet!

0.68.3 (2017-09-20)

Added –generate option to quickly generate a fixer.py template file to be modified to be used with -f fixer.fixit option. Added official support for Python 3.6

0.68.1 (2016-06-04)

Fixed encoding issues when processing non-ascii files. Added –encoding option to force the value of the encoding if need be. Listed support for Python 3.5

0.67.1 (2015-06-28)

Documentation fixes.

0.67 (2015-06-23)

Added file_name argument to processing functions. Fixed incorrect closing of sys.stdout/stderr. Improved diagnostic when the processing function does not take 2 arguments. Swapped -v and -V option to be consistent with Python. Pylint fixes. Added support for Python 3.4. Dropped support for Python 3.2.

0.66 (2013-07-14)

Fixed lost executable bit with -f option (thanks myint).

0.65 (2013-07-12)

Added -f option to execute code in a separate file/module. Added Travis continuous integration (thanks myint). Fixed python 2.7 support (thanks myint).

0.64 (2013-06-01)

Fixed setup.py so that massedit installs as a script. Fixed eol issues (thanks myint).

0.63 (2013-05-27)

Renamed to massedit. Previous version are still known as Python-Mass-Editor.

0.62 (2013-04-11)

Fixed bug that caused an EditorError to be raised when the result of the expression is an empty string.

0.61 (2012-07-06)

Added massedit.edit_files function to ease usage as library instead of as a command line tool (suggested by Maxim Veksler).

0.60 (2012-07-04)

Treats arguments as patterns rather than files to ease processing of multiple files in multiple subdirectories. Added -s (start directory) and -m (max depth) options.

0.52 (2012-06-05)

Upgraded for python 3. Still compatible with python 2.7.

0.51 (2012-05)

Initial release (Beta).

Contributor acknowledgement

https://github.com/myint https://github.com/tgoodlet https://github.com/ALFNeT https://github.com/isidroas