Replacing Class definition comments in java files.

Question

Hi to all,
Im trying to implement a java file replacer that opens about a thousand java files and replaces the first comment lines. That is to say assume that these thousand java files have this comment at the beginning of them:
*Date      Author     Changes
*${date} ${author} initial release
My application should find these comments and replace them with
* Project Name:
* File: ${file_name}
* Purpose:
* History:
*Date      Author     Changes
*${date} ${author} initial release
I dont need any GUI. just I will print the changed files to console.
My question is is there any example applications you guys can suggest and should I use XML and XSL to implement this application?
Any suggestions are highly appriciated.
Best Regards.
Metan

Answer 1

How is XML going to help you? Also for a task which you describe its easier to replace it wholesale rather than compare what is present and what is not. If you want to selectively want to remove stuff you might run into issues where you have to compare the name of the file, and you would not even know if the documentation already existing is the right one if you do not replace.
If at all you wish to go with XML it is better with XSL transforms but I guess that would be an overkill for the purpose.
As previously suggested perl is a very good option, or if you have unix operating system you can even try some basic shell scripting to do your job
Thanks