I use it for in-place search and replace within files. perl -pi -e 's/change this/into this/g' filename(s) -p assumes an input loop around your script. Lines

I use it for in-place search and replace within files. perl -pi -e 's/change this/into this/g' filename(s) -p assumes an input loop around your script. Lines are printed. -i in-place editing of files -e may be used to enter a single line of script. Multiple -e commands may be given to build up a multiline script. Combined with "find" with -exec and/or pipe the filenames into xargs and you can do a global search and replace across a whole tree of files.