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[Solved] macOS - Search and Replace text in multiple text files

 
MacOS X Software
Last Post by Hans 7 years ago
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 Hans
(@hans)
Famed Member Admin
Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 2859
Topic starter August 14, 2018 2:00 AM  

So I just ran into this issue; I had a bunch of txt files and in all these files I wanted to do a search and replace, replacing the word "POSIX" with the word "UNIX".
I've been trying to find a quick way to do this and found a trick used in the Linux world:

perl -pi -w -e 's/SEARCHTHIS/REPLACEWITHTHIS/g;' *.txt

This statement is executed in the directory where the files are.

So in my example:

perl -pi -w -e 's/POSIX/UNIX/g;' *.txt

Note:

  • If you want to do this in another directory, then you have two options; either go to that directory or enter a more complete path. For example if I'd like to replace text in any txt file in my home directory:
perl -pi -w -e 's/SEARCH_FOR/REPLACE_WITH/g;' /Users/hans/*.txt

(I know you can type ~ for the home directory, this is just an example with a full path)

  • Keep in mind that replacing spaces and such may require escape characters, for example
perl -pi -w -e 's/Search\ This/Replace\ With\ This/g;' *.txt

   
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