Replace string1 with string2

[Andrej Vavro]

Hi all,

I want to replace a string1 with a string2 in several acsii files using a script. What's the best and simpliest solution.

Thanks in advance.
Andrej

[Mark van Hassel · Accepted solution]

HI,

Try this:

for i in $(ls)
do
sed 's%string1%string2%g' $i >$i.new
mv $i $i.org
mv $i.new $i
done


HtH,

Mark

[Shannon Petry]

There is no way of doing this unless you make temp copies of your data. (or go interactive)

sed allows string replacement and is very good.
TMPFILE=/tmp/temp.txt
if [ -f $TMPFILE ] ; then
rm -f $TMPFILE
fi
touch $TMPFILE
cat myascii.txt | sed -e s/"string1"/"string2"/g >>$TMPFILE

Pattern matching is difficult to grok, so if your not good with pattern matching I'll recommend "SED and AWK" published by O'Reilly and Associates. The first 2 chapters are dedicated to this concept.
for more info on args to sed, see:
man sed
Regards,
Shannon

[Craig Rants]

Use sed

I would use...

for i in `cat filelist`
do
sed 's/string1/string2/g' $i > $i.new
done

you can then move or copy, whatever suits you, the new file to the original

GL,
C

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

#!/usr/bin/sh
#
# replace text in file
#
#set -x

if [ $# -lt 3 ];
then
echo "$0 old new /file.xml"
exit 1
fi

typeset OLD=$1
typeset NEW=$2
typeset FILE=$3

# cleanup

# kludge for sed end of file 'bug'
echo "" >> $FILE

# don't want to look at binaries
sed "s:$OLD:$NEW:g" $FILE > ${FILE}.bak
cp $FILE.bak $FILE

# summarise
#.end.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Andrei,

Use sed
Create a file containing the list of files you wish to work on.

Then use

for x in filelist
do
sed 's/oldstring/newstring/g $x >$x.out
done

You can include a mv command if you don't wish to keep the org file. The g forces the search/replace globally in the file - w/o it, it will only work on the first occurrence.

HTH,
Jeff

[harry d brown jr]

#!/usr/bin/ksh
find /tmp -type f | while read FNAME
do
sed "s/OLDSTRING/NEWSTRING/g" < ${FNAME} > ${FNAME}.tmp
mv ${FNAME}.tmp $FNAME
done


live free or die
harry

[S.K. Chan]

Sed is the simplest, not neccessarily the best . Assuming the dir has only files.
# cd /dirA
# for file in `ls`
>do
>sed 's/string1/string2/g' $file > $file.replaced
>done

Also check out some handy one-liner sed ..
http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/unix/sed.html

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

Script that'll do it recursively from dir.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x2a77abe92dabd5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html

Later,
Bill

[Jeff Schussele]

Sorry - left out the ending single quote in the sed command line. And if white space in the string you'll need quotes around it - doesn't hurt to use 'em even if no white space.
Should be as follows

sed 's/"oldstring"/"newstring"/g' $x >$x.out

Jeff

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I think I will give you a really cool way to do this that takes care of all the temp file stuff behind the scenes and will even optionally create a backup.

Try this:

perl -i.save -p -e 's/oldstring/newstring/g' myfile1 myfile2 myfile3

That will edit each of the files 'on the fly' and create a backup copy of each file myfile1.save, myfile2.save. If you don't need the backup copy simply use -i rather than -i.suffix.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Hey, Clay, that's *my* clue :)
Finaly using the command line switches hay?
Good explanation too. Something I would (deliberately) omit. Users might want to use the docs to also learn something instead of just devour what they get thrown in their hands ...

# perl -pi -e 's/old/new/' files

would have been my answer.

N/A