[Pdx-pm] cron or sudo editor interface?

[Randal L. Schwartz]

>>>>> "Chris" == Chris Dawson <cdawson at webiphany.com> writes:

Chris> Does anyone know of a good way to manipulate crontab files or sudo
Chris> files?  Usually I use visudo or crontab -e to edit these files, but I
Chris> would like to manipulate them programmatically.  I can simply copy the
Chris> files over to the correct place, but I wish there were a simple
Chris> interface to do this so that I could add lines without worrying I am
Chris> overwriting something else that has been added.   Nothing stands out
Chris> on CPAN.  Does anyone have ways they edit/manipulate these files?

"crontab -e" uses the EDITOR environment variable, calling it with
a temp file name as its first and only parameter, and incorporating
that as the new crontab if the file is updated.  Hence, you can
have two scripts.  Script A:

        #!/usr/bin/perl
        $ENV{EDITOR} = "scriptB";
        system "crontab", "-e";

Script B:

        #!/usr/bin/perl
        $^I = "~"; # trigger in-place edit
        while (<>) {
          print; # copy old lines to new lines
          # make your changes here, for example to add at eof:
          print ".. .. .. .. new line here .. ..\n" if eof;
        }

And that should work just fine.

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