Find and replace a string in multiple files - UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

pharos467 · #1 (**permalink**) 11-05-2007

I used the following script

cd pathname
for y in `ls *`;
do sed "s/ABCD/DCBA/g" $y > temp; mv temp $y;
done

and it worked fine for finding and replacing strings with names etc. in all files of the given path.

I'm trying to replace a string which consists of path (location of file)

say instead of ABCD i have to replace c:/mydocuments/pictures to
d:/mypics/personal , as metacharacters wont be searched in unix this script is failing to replace the string which has a path in it.

now my script is

cd pathname
for y in `ls *`;
do sed "s/'c:/mydocuments/pictures'/'d:/mypics/personal'/g" $y > temp; mv temp $y;
done

i tired giving the path in single quotes and double quotes, but i see error

sed: command garbled: s/'c:/mydocuments/pictures'/'d:/mypics/personal'/g

And all the contents of the files in the path are erased.

Is there any other way to work this out.

Thanks

porter · #2 (**permalink**) 11-05-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by pharos467

cd pathname
for y in `ls *`;
do sed "s/ABCD/DCBA/g" $y > temp; mv temp $y;
done

I'm not sure what you are doing but I would recode that as

Code:

for y in *
do
     sed "s/ABCD/DCBA/g" "$y" >temp
     mv temp "$y"
done

as for your second part, you need to escape the / forward slashes

Code:

sed "s/c:\/mydocuments\/pictures/d:\/mypics\/personal\/g/"

Yogesh Sawant · #3 (**permalink**) 11-05-2007

if you are familiar with regular expressions in perl:

Code:

perl -pi -e 's#c:/mydocuments/pictures#d:/mypics/personal#g' *

modify the regex as per your needs, if required

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