Shell Programming and Scripting

Quick and dirty

Code:

xargs <files/chang1.txt sed -i 's/apple/orange/'

xargs reads stdin and turns each line into an argument for the command.

I think the below will work well, if you not like to replace the files on the same directory

Code:

 while `read line`
do
     sed 's/apple/orange/g'  $line > <NewPath>/$line
done < changes.txt

the above can place the modified file in the newpath and the files in original files doesn't get override. since you are modifying 1000 files, if anything goes wrong you have a backup..

Let me know if this works for you...

Moderator's Comments:

Please use CODE tags (not ICODE tags) for multi-line sample input, output, and code segments.

No. The above code will not work with any shell. Command substitution occurs in a subshell execution environment. Variables set in a subshell execution environment (by read line in this case) cannot affect the parent shell execution environment. So, assuming changes.txt is an existing, non-empty, text file, the 1st time through your loop will run the command:

Code:

     sed 's/apple/orange/g'  $line > <NewPath>/$line

which, with the expansion of the (unquoted) $line in two places, will expand to the command:

Code:

     sed 's/apple/orange/g'   > <NewPath>/

which will attempt to read the remainder of changes.txt, change all occurrences of apple on those lines to orange, and write the results to the directory named by <newpath>/.. If you aren't running as root, that will fail. If you are running as root (depending on the operating system and filesystem type that contains that director)y, it will either fail with an EBADF, EISDIR, or EPERM error; or it will destroy that directory and make all files that were in that directory inaccessible.