blockinfile

Command line utility (CLI) that will insert/update/remove a block of multi-line text surrounded by customizable marker lines.

Inspiration

If this looks similar to Ansible's ansible.builtin.blockinfile, it should. This CLI is based on it and supports a subset of the Ansible blockinfile flags. This CLI was created for scenarios when you wanted Ansible's blockinfile function, but did not want to be dependent on installing Ansible.

Installation

go get github.com/dustinsand/blockinfile

CLI arguments

Argument	Comments
config	File with blockinfile configuration parameters.

Configuration File Parameters

Parameter	Choices	Comments
backup	true/false Default: false	Create a backup file including the timestamp information so you can get the original file back if you somehow clobbered it incorrectly.
block	text	The text to insert inside the marker lines.
indent	Default: 0	The number of spaces to indent the block. Indent must be >= 0.
insertafter	text	If specified and no begin/ending marker lines are found, the block will be inserted after the last match of specified text. If specified regular expression has no matches, EOF will be used instead.
insertbefore	text	If specified and no begin/ending marker lines are found, the block will be inserted before the last match of specified text. If specified regular expression has no matches, the block will be inserted at the end of the file.
marker	Default: "# {mark} MANAGED BLOCK"	The marker line template. {mark} will be replaced with the values in marker_begin (default="BEGIN") and marker_end (default="END").
markerbegin	Default: "BEGIN"	This will be inserted at {mark} in the opening block marker.
markerend	Default: "END"	This will be inserted at {mark} in the closing block marker.
path (required)	text	The file to modify. If the file does not exist, it will be created.
state	true/false Default: true	Whether the block should be there or not.

Examples

Example 1 - Replace block with new text.

/tmp/example1.txt

line 1
line 2
# BEGIN MANAGED BLOCK
old block 1
old block 2
# END MANAGED BLOCK
line 3
line 4

/tmp/blockinfile1.yml

path: /tmp/example1.txt
block: |-
  new block 1
  new block 2
indent: 2

blockinfile --config /tmp/blockinfile1.yml

Would update /tmp/example1.txt with

line 1
line 2
  # BEGIN MANAGED BLOCK
  new block 1
  new block 2
  # END MANAGED BLOCK
line 3
line 4

Example 2 - Add block to file.

/tmp/example2.txt

line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4

/tmp/blockinfile2.yml

path: /tmp/example2.txt
block: |-
  new block 1
  new block 2
indent: 2
insertbefore: "line 1"

blockinfile --config /tmp/blockinfile2.yml

Would update /tmp/example2.txt with

  # BEGIN MANAGED BLOCK
  new block 1
  new block 2
  # END MANAGED BLOCK
line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4