Bash script to find content of file in a directory and add value

Question

I have a directory with a huge number of files. I want to write a bash script to -

1. Enter that directory
2. Find out which of them are Perl scripts (but none of them have a .pl extension)
3. Add a line at the top of each of the line (I intend to add a new shebang) If not a Perl script, do nothing

I am unable to search for the Perl scripts, tried using grep but not getting the proper command. Also, the third step is also where I am stuck.

Answer 1

The most you can do to find the perl files is to use perl itself to judge. perl -c returns non-zero exit code if the file is not a correct perl code which is definitely true for MOST files that are not perl at all. Unfortunately, it does the same when it's fed with faulty perl code and returns 0 when the the file is actually not a perl code but can be parsed without error as if it were. If you can live with that risk, the core of it may be this:

for FILE in * ; do
   if perl -c "$FILE" >/dev/null ; then
      sed -i -e '1i#!/usr/bin/perl' "$FILE"
   fi
done

Remark: once I touch the files anyway, I would add .pl extension, unless there is some REALLY serious reason to be blind.