Every now and then, I have a reason to replace all occurrences of a certain string in every file in all sub-directories. Geneerally this is for scripts that will run on a Linux server, and finding a program to do this on windows seems hard!.
Now its possible on Linix using a combination of Find and Sed, using exec or xargs and also possible with grep and sed, or writing a simple script. However I can never remember the exact syntax and the best way.
For find
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find ./ -type f -exec sed -i ’s/string1/string2/g’ {} ; |
works well
I was really glad to find this useful command ‘rpl’ that replaces strings. Easy to install on Ubunto just
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sudo apt-get install rpl |
e.g.
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rpl -pR "old" "new" * |
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Usage: rpl [options] old_string new_string target_file(s) Options: --version show program's version number and exit -h, --help show this help message and exit -L, --license show the software license -x SUFFIX specify file suffix to match -i, --ignore-case do a case insensitive match -w, --whole-words whole words (old_string matches on word boundaries only) -b, --backup make a backup before overwriting files -q, --quiet quiet mode -v, --verbose verbose mode -s, --dry-run simulation mode -R, --recursive recurse into subdirectories -e, --escape expand escapes in old_string and new_string -p, --prompt prompt before modifying each file -f, --force ignore errors when trying to preserve permissions -d, --keep-times keep the modification times on modified files -t, --use-tmpdir use $TMPDIR for storing temporary files -a, --all do not ignore files and directories starting with . |
