Autorights automatically adds a copyright notice to several source files at once.

Autorights processes source files (C/C++/SH/PL/...) looking for commet blocks introduced by the line AUTORIGHTS and substituting them with a copyright notice. The notice is derived from a template (either read from a file or chosen among the pre-defined ones) customized for authors, holders, years and so on.

The program can also process recursively whole directories.

Download and install

The archive contains a single Perl script implementing autorights, plus a Makefile to generate the documentation. The script can be moved anywhere.

Example

Consider the C source file test.c 
/* AUTORIGHTS */

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  return 0 ;
}
Then 
> perl autorights.pl test.c    \
    --template=gpl             \
    --authors "Andrea Vedaldi" \
    --holders "Andrea Vedaldi" \
    --program "TEST"           \
    --years 2006
modifies test.c to 
/* AUTORIGHTS
Copyright (C) 2006 Andrea Vedaldi
      
This file is part of TEST.

TEST is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
*/

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  return 0 ;
}