FIND AND REPLACE with SED
Let us start off simple:
Imagine you have a large file ( txt, php, html, anything ) and you want to replace all the words
"ugly" with "beautiful" because you just met your old friend Sue again and she/he is coming over
for a visit.
This is the command:
CODE
$ sed i 's/ugly/beautiful/g' /home/bruno/oldfriends/sue.txt
Well, that command speaks for itself "sed" edits "i in place ( on the spot ) and replaces the word
"ugly with "beautiful" in the file "/home/bruno/oldfriends/sue.txt"
Now, here comes the real magic:
Imagine you have a whole lot of files in a directory ( all about Sue ) and you want the same
command to do all those files in one go because she/he is standing right at the door . .
Remember the find command ? We will combine the two:
CODE
$ find /home/bruno/oldfriends type f exec sed i 's/ugly/beautiful/g' {} \;
Sure in combination with the find command you can do all kind of nice tricks, even if you don't
remember where the files are located !
Aditionally I did find a little script on the net for if you often have to find and replace multiple files
at once:
CODE
#!/bin/bash
for fl in *.php; do
mv $fl $fl.old
sed 's/FINDSTRING/REPLACESTRING/g' $fl.old > $fl
rm f $fl.old
done
just replace the "*.php", "FINDSTRING" and "REPLACESTRING" make it executable and you
are set.
I changed a www address in 183 .html files in one go with this little script . . . but note that you
have to use "escapesigns" ( \ ) if there are slashes in the text you want to replace, so as an
example: 's/www.search.yahoo.com\/images/www.google.com\/linux/g' to change
www.search.yahoo.com/images to www.google.com/linux
For the lovers of perl I also found this one:
CODE
# perl e "s/old_string/new_string/g;" pi.save $(find DirectoryName type f)
But it leaves "traces", e.g it backs up the old file with a .save extension . . . so is not really effective
when Sue comes around ;/
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