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Search and Edit Files with Certain Text

Fri, 03/25/2005 - 15:01 — nepalexpo

Here's a quick way to edit all files whose contents contain a given string:

files=""; for i in `find . -type f -print`; do files="$files `grep -l <text> $i`"; done; vi $files
  1. For all file names in the current directory, including those in subdirectories, assign each in turn to the variable i.
    for i in `find . -type f -print`;
  2. For each of the files we found, run the grep command to search the file provided by the $i variable.
    do files="$files `grep -l <string> $i`";
  3. Edit the found files with the vi editor. 
    vi $files

    Move back and forth between files using:

    :n    -- move to the next file
:rew  -- move back 
:e #3 -- edit the third file in buffer
:ar   -- list files status
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Mon, 03/28/2005 - 10:13 — peterretief Search and replace text in html files

The escape characters make the regex hard to read/write (For me that is)
ie to add index.html at the end of each href - replace /" with /index.html"

find . -name "*.html" -print0 | xargs --null perl -pi -e 's/\/\"/\/index.html\"/'

This script contains perl - possibly the head honcho of text manipulation scripting languages - though perl could be replaced with grep, in this instance.

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