7/23    How do you do this in sed, not perl?
        s/(.*).gif/$1th.gif/;
        s/(.*).gif/\1th.gif/
        \_ sed: 1: "s/(.*).gif/\1th.gif/": \1 not defined in the RE
           \_ try this instead (ugly, but works): sed 's/.*/&th.gif/;s/.gif//'
           \_ sed 's/\(.*\)\.gif/\1th.gif/'
              (sed uses \( and \) to mean "save this") also,
              don't forget to \ the . so it doesn't mean "any character"
              --dbushong
                \_ woo woo, that's what i was looking for. you da man!
                   \_ This being said, perl regexps are significantly nicer
                      than sed, perl -e 'regexp' is nicer than sed 'regexp'
                      And if you're applying it to an entire file in place,
                      you can say perl -pi -e 'regexp', whereas you need to
                      create tempfiles for sed..  --dbushong
                      \_ but this is what i wanted to do:
                         foreach f (*.gif)
                         mv $f `echo $f | sed 's/\(.*\)\.gif/\1th.gif/'`
                         end
                         it seems like it's better done at the command
                         line. I didn't think you can do that in as few
                         bytes (and processes) in perl.
                          \_ You can do it in 1 process, and approximately
                             the same number of bytes, in perl.  -tom
                      \_ Yeah?  So?  sed is for real men.  You sound like a
                         limp-wristed, lisping girly-man.  You probably use
                         emacs instead of ed, too, I'll bet.
                        \_ ed? You pansy faggot!  I use cat, don't make any
                           mistakes and never need to edit a file because I
                           thought ahead and did it right the first time!
                      \_ why are perl regexps "nicer"?
                         \_ In general, they require fewer backslashes, support
                            all the standard operators, and add some new and
                            useful (if tricky) things like non-greedy qfiers.