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:
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/old-friends/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:
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:
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 "escape-signs" ( \ ) 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:
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 ;-/
REFERENCE
http://www.brunolinux.com/02-The_Terminal/Find_and%20Replace_with_Sed.html
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/old-friends/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/old-friends/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/old-friends -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 "escape-signs" ( \ ) 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 ;-/
REFERENCE
http://www.brunolinux.com/02-The_Terminal/Find_and%20Replace_with_Sed.html
