Search-and-Replace on despatcheshttps://icle.es/tags/search-and-replace/Recent content in Search-and-Replace on despatchesHugoenFri, 20 Jun 2025 09:25:00 +0100Linux bulk search and replacehttps://icle.es/2010/04/21/linux-bulk-search-and-replace/Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:47:26 +0000https://icle.es/2010/04/21/linux-bulk-search-and-replace/<p>Doing a bulk search and replace across a set of files is actually surprisingly easy. sed is the key. It has a flag - i that will modify the files passed to it in-place.</p> ```bash $ sed -e 's/TextToFind/Replacement/' -i file1 file2 file3 ``` <p>Tie this power with either grep <code>-l</code>. (Thanks to Steve for pointing out a mistake in the following, now corrected)</p> ```bash $ grep -l TextToFind * |xargs sed -e 's/TextToFind/Replacement/' -i ``` <p>or find</p>Doing a bulk search and replace across a set of files is actually surprisingly easy. sed is the key. It has a flag - i that will modify the files passed to it in-place.

```bash $ sed -e 's/TextToFind/Replacement/' -i file1 file2 file3 ```

Tie this power with either grep -l. (Thanks to Steve for pointing out a mistake in the following, now corrected)

```bash $ grep -l TextToFind * |xargs sed -e 's/TextToFind/Replacement/' -i ```

or find

```bash $ find . -exec sed -e 's/TextToFind/Replacement' -i {} ; ```

If there are multiple changes you want to make, just put them all into a file and pass it in via the -f flag.

file: replacements.patterns

```sed s/TextToFind1/Replacement1/ s/TextToFind2/Replacement2/ s/TextToFind3/Replacement3/ ```

and the command, using find to iterate through all files in the current directory and subdirectories.

```bash find . -exec sed -f replacements.patterns -i {} ; ```

et voila - hope it helps.

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