The operation log contains the start time, elapsed time, total lines in each file, total lines processed, total number of altered files, total number of files processed, total number of occurrences of each string, total number of all occurrences, and total number of lines that contained occurrences. Blazing speed - processes approximately 10,000 lines per second on a 200Mhz Pentium. This permits the representation of special characters. All parameters are checked first for errors before the operation begins. including invalid directories, no files match the criteria, unentered information, duplicate search strings, unequal number of search and replace strings, replacement string is the same as the search string, etc. A warning is given if a file was specified more than once or there are two identical replacement strings.
Great care is taken when making changes to a file.
The old file is renamed to a temporary file for safe keeping. The replacement is then written and verified. If any errors occur, the old file is restored and the error is reported. Otherwise, the temporary original file is deleted. These steps help ensure that data never gets lost.