Global replace with sed


 
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# 1  
Old 05-13-2008
Global replace with sed

Hi,

I need to change some strings from A to B in a number of files within a directory. Please can someone advise how do I do that?

Many thanks
# 2  
Old 05-13-2008
Read this page and when you finish get back to us.
# 3  
Old 05-13-2008
Thanks, however it will be nice if you can just put the command here. I m doing something like

find . -name "*.txt*" -type f -exec sed -e 's/ugly/bad/g' {} \;

but it doesn't like it.

Thnx
# 4  
Old 05-13-2008
"It doesn't like" is not very specific, do you get an error message or surprising results or nothing at all?

You are not saving the output from sed anywhere so my guess would be you would see the files roll across your screen with the substitutions made as requested. If your sed supports the -i option then you can use that. Otherwise a simple temporary external script is probably the way to go.
# 5  
Old 05-15-2008
I am on solaris 8 and getting illegal option error. Looks like I am using a sed which does not support sed -i Smilie

Thanks guys for your help!
# 6  
Old 05-15-2008
Use a temp file.
Code:
 find . -name "*.txt" -type f -exec sed 's/ugly/bad/g' {} > tmp \; -exec mv tmp {} \;

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