Comments on: Easy Search and Replace in Multiple Files on Linux Command Line

By: Abcd3331

Abcd3331 — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 07:03:00 +0000

very helpfull…… thanks a ton…..

By: Christian Dannie Storgaard

Christian Dannie Storgaard — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:48:53 +0000

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\/”)

By: Christian Dannie Storgaard

Christian Dannie Storgaard — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:48:00 +0000

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’

By: Matthew Lanham

Matthew Lanham — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 02:29:46 +0000

Useful command line info for find & replace http://bit.ly/ddzeQo

By: Dave Drager

Dave Drager — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:27:20 +0000

Post Update: Single line search/replace in multiple files, 100% more perl! http://su.pr/1S9lWS

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:18:21 +0000

@btr: That is extremely helpful, thank you! Will update post.

By: Dave Drager

Dave Drager — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:18:00 +0000

@btr: That is extremely helpful, thank you! Will update post.

By: btr

btr — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:04:50 +0000

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

By: btr

btr — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:04:00 +0000

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

By: nobu

nobu — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:16:44 +0000

Very useful, thks from Spain!!