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Do a search-and-replace in a file after making a backup

Terminal - Do a search-and-replace in a file after making a backup
sed -i.bak 's/old/new/g' file
2010-01-06 17:04:05
User: deltaray
Functions: sed
1
Up
Down
Do a search-and-replace in a file after making a backup

sed already has an option for editing files in place and making backup copies of the old file. -i will edit a file in place and if you give it an argument, it will make a backup file using that string as an extension.

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Alternatives

There are 9 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
perl -i'.bak' -pe 's/old/new/g' <filename>
2009-08-25 17:37:59
User: unixmonkey5248
Functions: perl
Tags: perl sed
3
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Do a search-and-replace in a file after making a backup
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
for file in <filename>; do cp $file{,.bak} && sed 's/old/new/g' $file.bak > $file; done
2009-08-25 16:19:45
User: Cenobite
Functions: cp file sed
Tags: bash sed
0
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Do a search-and-replace in a file after making a backup

"&&" runs sed if and only if the backup completed and /bin/cp exited cleanly. Works for multiple files; just specify multiple filenames (or glob). Use -v switch for cp to play it safe.

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

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