Find and Replace Across Multiple Files

Archiving for my own benefit the results of yet another 5 minute look for how to do find and replace across multiple files from the command line:

1. Use sed:

   sed -i 's/foo/foo_bar/g' *.html

2. use the old perl hack:

   perl -w -pi~ -e 's/foo/bar/' [files]

   Notes: -p: loop, -i edit files in place (backup with extension if supplied), -w enable warnings

3. Install rpl

   • http://freshmeat.net/projects/rpl/
   • port install rpl (mac osx)
   • apt-get install rpl (debian/ubuntu)

Combining either (1) or (2) with find is pretty powerful. E.g. to do a find and replace on all html files in all subdirectories:

perl -w -pi -e 's/foo/bar/' find <path> -name '*.html'