How to replace a string in multiple files in linux command line

Question

I need to replace a string in a lot of files in a folder  with only ssh access to the server  How can I do this

User · Answer

There is an easier way by using a simple script file:

   # sudo chmod +x /bin/replace_string_files_present_dir

open the file in gedit or an editor of your choice, I use gedit here.

   # sudo gedit /bin/replace_string_files_present_dir

Then in the editor paste the following in the file

   #!/bin/bash
   replace "oldstring" "newstring" -- *
   replace "oldstring1" "newstring2" -- *
   #add as many lines of replace as there are your strings to be replaced for 
   #example here i have two sets of strings to replace which are oldstring and 
   #oldstring1 so I use two replace lines.

Save the file, close gedit, then exit your terminal or just close it and then start it to be able load the new script you added.

Navigate to the directory where you have multiple files you want to edit. Then run:

  #replace_string_files_present_dir

Press enter and this will automatically replace the oldstring and oldstring1 in all the files that contain them with the correct newstring and newstring1 respectively.

It will skip all the directories and files that don't contain the old strings.

This might help in eliminating the tedious work of typing in case you have multiple directories with files that need string replacement. All you have to do is navigate to each of those directories, then run:

#replace_string_files_present_dir

All you have to do is to ensure you've included or added all the replacement strings as I showed you above:

replace "oldstring" "newstring" -- *

at the end of the file /bin/replace_string_files_present_dir.

To add a new replace string just open the script we created by typing the following in the terminal:

sudo gedit /bin/replace_string_files_present_dir

Don't worry about the number of replace strings you add, they will have no effect if the oldstring is not found.

User · Answer

I did concoct my own solution before I found this question  and answers   I searched for different combinations of  replace   several  and  xml   because that was my application  but did not find this particular one   My problem  I had spring xml files with data for test cases  containing complex objects  A refactor on the java source code changed a lot of classes and did not apply to the xml data files  In order to save the test cases data  I needed to change all the class names in all the xml files  distributed across several directories  All while saving backup copies of the original xml files  although this was not a must  since version control would save me here    I was looking for some combination of find   sed  because it worked for me in other situations  but not with several replacements at once   Then I found ask ubuntu response and it helped me build my command line   find -name    xml  -exec sed -s --in-place  bak -e  s firstWord newFirstWord g s secondWord newSecondWord g s thirdWord newThirdWord g          And it worked perfectly  well  my case had six different replacements   But please note that it will touch all   xml files under current directory  Because of that  and if you are accountable to a version control system  you might want to filter first and only pass on to sed those actually having the strings you want  like   find -name    xml  -exec grep -e  firstWord  -e  secondWord  -e  thirdWord        -exec sed -s --in-place  bak -e  s firstWord newFirstWord g s secondWord newSecondWord g s thirdWord newThirdWord g

User · Answer

Below command can be used to first search the files and replace the files   find     xargs grep  search string    sed  s search string new string g    For example  find     xargs grep abc   sed  s abc xyz g

User · Answer

script for multiedit command  multiedit  -n PATTERN  OLDSTRING NEWSTRING   From Kaspar s answer I made a bash script to accept command line arguments and optionally limit the filenames matching a pattern  Save in your  PATH and make executable  then just use the command above   Here s the script      bin bash  help   n Replace OLDSTRING with NEWSTRING recursively starting from current directory n multiedit  -n PATTERN  OLDSTRING NEWSTRING n   -n PATTERN  option limits to filenames matching PATTERN n Note  backslash escape special characters n Note  enclose STRINGS with spaces in double quotes n Example to limit the edit to python files  n multiedit -n    py   OLD STRING   NEWSTRING n     ensure correct number of arguments  otherwise display help    if      -lt 2           -gt 4    then echo -e   help   exit   fi if    1     -n     then    if -n option is given            replace OLDSTRING with NEWSTRING recursively in files matching PATTERN         find    -type f -name   2  -exec sed -i  s  3  4 g        else           replace OLDSTRING with NEWSTRING recursively in all files         find    -type f -exec sed -i  s  1  2         fi

User · Answer

The first line occurrences of  foo  will be replaced with  bar   And you can using the second line to check   grep -rl  foo      xargs sed -i  s foo bar g  grep  foo  -r     awk -F    print  1     sort -n   uniq -c

User · Answer

cd  path to your folder sed -i  s foo bar g      Occurrences of  foo  will be replaced with  bar    On BSD systems like macOS  you need to provide a backup extension like -i   bak  or else  risk corruption or partial content  per the manpage   cd  path to your folder sed -i   bak   s foo bar g

User · Answer

On a MacBook Pro  I used the following  inspired by https   stackoverflow com a 19457213 6169225    sed -i    -e  s  lt STR TO REPLACE gt   lt REPLACEMENT STR gt  g         -i    will ensure you are taking no backups       -e for modern regex

User · Answer

Similar to Kaspar s answer but with the g flag to replace all the occurrences on a line    find    -type f -exec sed -i  s string1 string2 g          For global case insensitive   find    -type f -exec sed -i  s string1 string2 gI

User · Answer

kev s answer is good  but only affects files in the immediate directory The example below uses grep to recursively find files  It works for me everytime   grep -rli  old-word      xargs -i  sed -i  s old-word new-word g        Command breakdown  grep -r  --recursive  recursively read all files under each directory  grep -l  --print-with-matches  prints the name of each file that has a match  instead of printing matching lines  grep -i  --ignore-case     xargs  transform the STDIN to arguments  follow this answer  xargs -i   command contains     a placeholder for the argument to be used in a specific position in the  command   the   sign is a placeholder which could replaced by any string     sed -i  edit files in place  without backups  sed s regexp replacement   substitute string matching regexp with replacement  sed s regexp replacement g  global  make the substitution for each match instead of only the first match

User · Answer

I am giving an example for fixing a common shebang error in python sources   You can try the grep sed approach  Here is one that works with GNU sed and won t break a git repo     grep -rli --exclude    git       usr bin python      xargs -I      gsed -i    -e  s     usr  bin  python     usr  bin  env python        Or you can use greptile        greptile -x  py -l -i -g     usr bin env python  -r     usr bin python      I just tested the first script  and the second should work as well  Be careful with escape characters  I think it should be easier to use greptile in most cases  Of course  you can do many interesting things with sed  and for that it may be preferable to master using it with xargs

User · Answer

To replace a path within files  avoiding escape characters  you may use the following command   sed -i  s old path new path g    The   sign means that all of the special characters should be ignored in a following string

User · Answer

Using the ack command would be alot faster like this   ack  25 Essex  -l   xargs sed -i  s The  fox  jump abc 321 g    Also if you have a white space in the search result  You need to escape it

User · Answer

To replace a string in multiple files you can use   grep -rl string1 somedir    xargs sed -i  s string1 string2 g    E g   grep -rl  windows       xargs sed -i  s windows linux g    Source blog

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If the file contains backslashes  paths usually  you can try something like this   sed -i --  s  lt path1 gt   lt path2 gt  g      ex   sed -i --  s  foo bar  new foo bar g    sh  in all shell scripts available

User · Answer

grep --include    php   html  -rnl      -e  old    xargs -i  sed -i  s old new g

User · Answer

The stream editor does modify multiple files    inplace    when invoked with the -i switch  which takes a backup file ending as argument  So  sed -i bak  s foo bar g      replaces foo with bar in all files in this folder  but does not descend into subfolders  This will however generate a new  bak file for every file in your directory  To do this recursively for all files in this directory and all its subdirectories  you need a helper  like find  to traverse the directory tree   find    -print0   xargs -0 sed -i bak  s foo bar g      find allows you further restrictions on what files to modify  by specifying further arguments like find    -name    php  -or -name    html  -print0  if necessary     Note  GNU sed does not require a file ending  sed -i  s foo bar g    will work  as well  FreeBSD sed demands an extension  but allows a space in between  so sed -i  bak s foo bar g   works

User · Answer

Given you want to search for the string search and replace it with replace across multiple files  this is my battle-tested  one-line formula   grep -RiIl  search    xargs sed -i  s search replace g    Quick grep explanation    -R - recursive search -i - case-insensitive -I - skip binary files  you want text  right   -l - print a simple list as output  Needed for the other commands   The grep output is then piped to sed  through xargs  which is used to actually replace text  The -i flag will alter the file directly  Remove it for a kind of  dry run  mode

User · Answer

You could also use find and sed  but I find that this little line of perl works nicely   perl -pi -w -e  s search replace g     php    -e means execute the following line of code  -i means edit in-place -w write warnings -p loop      Extracted from http   www liamdelahunty com tips linux search and replace multiple files php   My best results come from using perl and grep  to ensure that file have the search expression    perl -pi -w -e  s search replace g      grep -rl  search

User · Answer

Really lame  but I couldn t get any of the sed commands to work right on OSX  so I did this dumb thing instead     s foo bar g  wn    - copy these three lines into my clipboard  yes  include the ending newline   then   vi    and hold down command-v until it says there s no files left   Dumb   hacky   effective

User · Answer

There are a few standard answers to this already listed  Generally  you can use find to recursively list the files and then do the operations with sed or perl   For most quick uses  you may find the command rpl is much easier to remember  Here is replacement  foo -  bar   recursively on all files   rpl -R foo bar    You ll probably need to install it  apt-get install rpl or similar    However  for tougher jobs that involve regular expressions and back substitution  or file renames as well as search-and-replace  the most general and powerful tool I m aware of is repren  a small Python script I wrote a while back for some thornier renaming and refactoring tasks  The reasons you might prefer it are    Support renaming of files as well as search-and-replace on file contents  See changes before you commit to performing the search and replace  Support regular expressions with back substitution  whole words  case insensitive  and case preserving  replace foo -  bar  Foo -  Bar  FOO -  BAR  modes  Works with multiple replacements  including swaps  foo -  bar and bar -  foo  or sets of non-unique replacements  foo -  bar  f -  x     To use it  pip install repren  Check the README for examples

User · Answer

If you have list of files you can use   replace  old string   new string  -- file name1 file name2 file name3   If you have all files you can use   replace  old string   new string  --     If you have list of files with extension  you can use   replace  old string   new string  --   extension

User · Answer

In case your string has a forward slash    in it  you could change the delimiter to       find   -type f -exec sed -i  s http   example com https   example com g         This command would run recursively in the current directory

User · Answer

I found this one from another post  can t remember which  and while not the most elegant  it s simple and as a novice Linux user has given me no trouble  for i in  old str    do mv -v   i     i  old str new str     done   if you have spaces or other special characters use a     for i in  old str      do mv -v   i     i  old str   new str     done   for strings in sub-directories use     for i in    old str      do mv -v   i     i  old str   new str     done

User · Answer

I d just like to add a note to do two things at once - find a file that contains a string and then do a replace  using the find  chaining  method  find    -type f -iname    php -exec fgrep -l  quot www  quot        -exec sed -i  quot s www  g quot                In this real case  remove the anachronistic  www  from urls found in PHP files   The  fgrep -l  only triggers if it finds at least one match in a file  it produces no other output  Don t forget the      separators

User · Answer

This worked for me   find    -type f -exec sed -i  s string1 string2           Howerver  this did not  sed -i  s string1 string2 g     Maybe  foo  was not meant to be string1 and  bar  not string2

User · Answer

To maintain my personal English node  I wrote an utility script that help to replace multiple pair of old new string  for all files under a directory recursively   The multiple pair of old   new string are managed in a hash map   The dir can be set via command line or environment variable  the map is hard coded in the script  but you can modify the code to load from a file  if necessary   It requires bash 4 2  due to some new feature   en standardize sh       bin bash    need bash 4 2         Standardize phonetic symbol of English       format      en standardize sh   lt dir gt        params      dir     target dir  optional      if not specified then use environment variable   node dir en       if both not provided  then will not execute           paramCount       figure target dir  if    paramCount -ge 1    then   dir specified     echo -e  dir specified  in command   n t 1 n      targetDir  1 elif    -v node dir en     then   environable set      echo -e  dir specified  in environment vairable   n t node dir en n      targetDir  node dir en else   environable not set      echo  dir not specified  won t execute      exit fi    check whether dir exists  if   -d  targetDir    then     cd  targetDir else     echo -e  invalid dir location  n t targetDir n      exit fi    initial map  declare -A itemMap itemMap          i                                       u         e      print item maps  echo  maps   for key in     itemMap       do     echo -e   t key t- gt  t  itemMap  key    done echo -e   n     do replace  for key in     itemMap       do     grep -rli   key      xargs -i  sed -i  s  key   itemMap  key   g    done  echo -e   nDone   exit

[linux] How to replace a string in multiple files in linux command line

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