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Search and Replace across multiple files

Terminal - Search and Replace across multiple files
grep -lr -e '<oldword>' * | xargs sed -i 's/<oldword>/<newword>/g'
2011-08-27 02:42:51
User: o0110o
Functions: grep sed xargs
5
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Search and Replace across multiple files

- 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)

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

If you are using grep's -r switch, thus running a recursive search, you can specify the present working directory name instead of the glob * in order to search for all files. That will also search for dot files and will be more efficient.

i.e.

grep -lr -e '<oldword>' .

instead of

grep -lr -e '<oldword>' *
Comment by RanyAlbeg 91 weeks ago

Also I'd recommend -s -I grep options to skip read access errors and binary files

Comment by zolden 90 weeks and 6 days ago

Thanks for your input folks :)

Comment by o0110o 88 weeks and 5 days ago

Your point of view

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