How do I do a mass search and replace in a directory?
How can I search for a string in all my files and replace it with a text?
Are there any spiffy shortcuts for search/replace in a directory using command line Perl?
How do I load a list of replace patterns from a file in a one-liner?
Use this my all time favorite one line scripts ….:)
Assuming you are in the directory where you want to effect this search and replace
perl -pi -e ’s/lookFor/replaceWith/’ *.fileExtension
perl -pi -e ’s/lookFor/replaceWith/g’ *.fileExtension
perl -pi -e ’s/lookFor/replaceWith/gi’ *.fileExtension
Explanation :
- lookFor is the word you wish to look for.
- replaceWith is the word you wish to replace your original word with
- g stands for global, it will basically replace all the occurences of lookFor with replaceWith in all your files in a directory
- i stands for case insensitive
To load a series of replace expressions from a text file:
perl -pi -e "`/path/to/replace-patterns.txt`" *.fileExtension
s/lookForPatternOne/replaceWithOne/;
s/lookForPatTwo/replaceWithTwo/g;
s/lookForPatThree/replaceWithThree/gi;
Is it possible to use a replace-patterns.txt file to search replace expressions in a file?
Hello Ken,
You shoule be able to do it with the followign command like :
perl -pi -e “`/path/to/replace-patterns.txt`” *.fileExtension
Put all your lookfor and replace with pattern in file replace-patterns.txt.
Thanks,
Puneet