Easy Search and Replace in Multiple Files on Linux Command Line

I recently came across a typo that existed in a bunch of html files on my web server. I thought it should be easy enough to change, but since it was in a number of files, editing it by hand would be time consuming. Fortunately, there is an easy, one liner command to replace the text in multiple files in a sub directory using recursion.

grep -lr -e '<oldword>' * | xargs sed -i 's/<oldword>/<newword>/g'

This command broken down:

grep for the word in a files, use recursion (to find files in sub directories), and list only file matches
| xargs passes the results from the grep command to sed
sed -i uses a regular expression (regex) to evaluate the change: s (search) / search word / target word / g (global replace)

For more information, see man pages for grep, sed, and xarg. Also it is very handy to learn about regular expressions as they are a valuable tool to any command line programmer!

Update 2009/7/19:

Thanks to reader btr we have a great one-line perl command that will perform the same task:

Perl provides a really nice one-line for this kind of thing:

1	perl -p -i -e ’s///g’ *

It also provides the option of creating a backup of each file changed:

1	perl -p -i.bak -e ’s///g’ *

mnemonic: PIE (”easy as pie”, etc.)
google “perl pie” and you’ll get lots of info for other uses of this technique.

http://www.linux.org/lessons/short/perlpie/perl_pie.html

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Short URL: http://sysbash.com/2o Last updated: July 20th, 2009

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max

Awesome! so helpful. thanks
max

Awesome! so helpful. thanks
nobu

Very useful, thks from Spain!!
nobu

Very useful, thks from Spain!!
btr

Perl provides a really nice one-line for this kind of thing:

perl -p -i -e ‘s///g’ *

It also provides the option of creating a backup of each file changed:

perl -p -i.bak -e ‘s///g’ *

mnemonic: PIE (“easy as pie”, etc.)
google “perl pie” and you’ll get lots of info for other uses of this technique.

http://www.linux.org/lessons/short/perlpie/perl_pie.html
btr

Perl provides a really nice one-line for this kind of thing:

perl -p -i -e ‘s///g’ *

It also provides the option of creating a backup of each file changed:

perl -p -i.bak -e ‘s///g’ *

mnemonic: PIE (“easy as pie”, etc.)
google “perl pie” and you’ll get lots of info for other uses of this technique.

http://www.linux.org/lessons/short/perlpie/perl_pie.html
http://davedrager.com Dave Drager

@btr: That is extremely helpful, thank you! Will update post.
http://systembash.com Dave

@btr: That is extremely helpful, thank you! Will update post.
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http://cybolic.wordpress.com/ Christian Dannie Storgaard

Thanks for the tip!
One thing though, it doesn’t work with filenames containing spaces; here’s an updated version:

grep -lZr -e ” * | xargs -0 sed -i ‘s///g’

Also, it might be worth noting that the first search string (the first ”) can be written without any escaping, but that the next two strings (/) have to be escaped for use in a regular expression, that is, having . ( ) [ ] ? * and / being prefixed by a (e.g. “/home/user/” becomes “/home/user/”)
http://cybolic.wordpress.com/ Christian Dannie Storgaard

Thanks for the tip!
One thing though, it doesn’t work with filenames containing spaces; here’s an updated version:

grep -lZr -e ” * | xargs -0 sed -i ‘s///g’

Also, it might be worth noting that the first search string (the first ”) can be written without any escaping, but that the next two strings (/) have to be escaped for use in a regular expression, that is, having . ( ) [ ] ? * and / being prefixed by a \ (e.g. “/home/user/” becomes “\/home\/user\/”)
Abcd3331

very helpfull…… thanks a ton…..