Re: An easy way to convert from absolute to \relative?

[PMA]

David Kastrup wrote:
> Father Gordon Gilbert<address@hidden>  writes:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have a number of pieces I entered quite a while ago (2.5.x, etc) in
> > absolute pitch -- being the easiest for me at the time.
> >
> > But now I'd like to update them (2.15.x), and while convert-ly does a
> > good job of changing up the basic syntax, I'd like to know if there's
> > an easy way of getting rid of all the ' and , so the piece can be done
> > in \relative mode.  I did "search and replace" on one long piece,
> > which resulted in well over an hour's work fixing octaves.  Can this
> > be automated?
>
> This appears on the feature list of the LilyPond editor Frescobaldi
> <URL:http://frescobaldi.org>.
>
> A solution within LilyPond itself would not really help as it would not
> preserve the spacing of your input source.

In Linux at least, you could make the changes *and* preserve
your layout, by calling 'sed' against the .ly file to replace each
" ' " and " , " with a space.  something like

                 cat <file>.ly | sed "s/[',]/ /g" > FOO

(That's a guess.  Do check out FOO before copying it back in.)