If MadeInGermany's suggestion is working for you save it as "change.sh" (or whatever name you like, the name doesn't particularly matter), add the missing ">" characters as suggested by Aia, make it executable by issuing:

Code:

chmod +x /path/to/change.sh

and then execute this:

Code:

find /path/to/directory-with-files -type f -ls

check if this resembles the list of files you want to change. If not, you can "tune" your selection using various clauses of which the man-page of "find" tells you more about. Once you are satisfied with your selection replace the -ls in the line with this:

Code:

find /path/to/directory-with-files -type f [..other clauses...] -exec /path/to/change.sh {} \;

This will call the script change.sh with the filename to process as single parameter like this:

Code:

/path/to/change.sh /path/to/file1
/path/to/change.sh /path/to/file2
/path/to/change.sh /path/to/file3
...

Note that processing some thousands of files can take a while and there is no diagnostic output so far. (you could add a statement to MadeInGermany's script to display the file to be processed).

This method will not be limited to any number of files.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

PS: MadeInGermany's solution didn't create an output file. Change his last line from

Code:

' "$@"

to this:

Code:

' "$1" > "${1}.xml"

to create filename.xml from the input filename