What's the best tool to find and replace regular expressions over multiple files?

Question

Preferably free tools if possible.

Also, the option of searching for multiple regular expressions and each replacing with different strings would be a bonus.

This should be migrated to SoftwareRecs.SE – Ky - Aug 28 '17 at 20:00 — Ky -, Aug 28 '17 at 20:00

score 46 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 29 '19 at 12:26

46

Perl.

Seriously, it makes sysadmin stuff so much easier. Here's an example:

perl -pi -e 's/something/somethingelse/g' *.log

edited Oct 29 '19 at 12:26

simhumileco

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answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:13

Alex Fort

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An extension to this would be using egrep, example: `perl -pi -e 's/something/somethingelse/g'\`egrep -ril "something" ./\`` – Andre Helberg Mar 28 '14 at 18:01
2

As a note, the flags are: `p`: print, for each line, `i`:edit file inline, `e`: execute command given on commandline – brian Jul 05 '17 at 18:23
How to do this using `rg` and `xargs`? – Purplejacket Dec 02 '17 at 05:09
Is there a way to have perl output the replaced values into a new file, with none of the non-matching data from the other file? – Aaron Franke Jun 24 '21 at 20:03

score 27 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 29 '19 at 12:33

27

sed is quick and easy:

sed -e "s/pattern/result/" <file list>

You can also join it with find:

find <other find args> -exec sed -e "s/pattern/result/" "{}" ";"

edited Oct 29 '19 at 12:33

simhumileco

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answered Sep 19 '08 at 15:19

Frosty

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I agree on the quick.... and it is easy only for a given value of easy. Anyways +1 ;) – Mario Ortegón Jun 12 '09 at 21:17
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Yeah, but problems begin when you have to paste 10 lines long html code with dots, slashes, quotation marks and so on to multiple files. – alekwisnia Sep 06 '11 at 12:59
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This doesn't appear to update the files, but simply output them. The `-i` argument appears to fix that. See also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10445934/change-multiple-files – Thomas Ahle Sep 12 '16 at 09:33

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 23 '13 at 19:50

9

I've written a free command line tool for Windows to do this. It's called rxrepl, it supports unicode and file search. Some may find it useful.

answered Jan 23 '13 at 19:50

user2005187

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score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:11

6

Textpad does a good job of it on Windows. And it's a very good editor as well.

answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:11

levik

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Couldn't agree more about TextPad being an excellent editor (my personal favourite). However, whilst it does search over multiple files (and very quickly at that) it doesn't do search and replace over multiple files. – Umber Ferrule Sep 21 '08 at 09:07
6

Yes it does. What you have to do is right-click and select "Open All" in the search results. This will open all the found files. Then in the Replace dialog, click the "All Documents" radio button for where to do the replacing. After it finishes, click "Save All". – levik Sep 23 '08 at 13:52

score 6 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:17

6

Emacs's directory editor has the `dired-do-query-replace-regexp' function to search for and replace a regexp over a set of marked files.

answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:17

lindelof

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score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:16

5

Unsurprisingly, Perl does a fine job of handling this, in conjunction with a decent shell:

for file in @filelist ; do
  perl -p -i -e "s/pattern/result/g" $file
done

This has the same effect (but is more efficient, and without the race condition) as:

for file in @filelist ; do
  cat $file | sed "s/pattern/result/" > /tmp/newfile
  mv /tmp/newfile $file
done

answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:16

Craig Trader

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I also like to use "find -iname" with thatm to get a recursive search. – Osama Al-Maadeed Oct 24 '08 at 08:08

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:10

4

Under Windows, I used to like WinGrep

Under Ubuntu, I use Regexxer.

answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:10

Oli

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WinGrep is no longer available. Now you can use [grepwin](https://sourceforge.net/projects/grepwin/) instead. – DanielTuzes Mar 03 '17 at 09:53

score 3 · Answer 8 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

3

For find-and-replace on multiple files on Windows I found rxFind to be very helpful.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered Oct 14 '08 at 18:09

Huppie

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score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:12

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For Mac OS X, TextWrangler does the job.

answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:12

Especially because it provides visual feedback and allows you to review the changes it made before saving them back to files. I prefer BBEdit, its bigger brother, though, for its larger amount of functionality. Isn't free like TextWrangler, though – Thomas Tempelmann Dec 17 '08 at 15:26

score 2 · Answer 10 · answered Jan 28 '13 at 15:26

I love this tool:

http://www.abareplace.com/

Gives you an "as you type" preview of your regular expression... FANTASTIC for those not well versed in RE's... and it is super fast at changing hundreds or thousands of files at a time...

And then let's you UNDO your changes as well...

Very nice...

Patrick Steil - http://www.podiotools.com

score 2 · Answer 11 · edited Feb 08 '17 at 14:12

2

My personal favorite is PowerGrep by JGSoft. It interfaces with RegexBuddy which can help you to create and test the regular expression, automatically backs up all changes (and provides undo capabilities), provides the ability to parse multiple directories (with filename patterns), and even supports file formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PDF.

PowerGrep Screenshot

edited Feb 08 '17 at 14:12

Community

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answered Jun 07 '09 at 21:19

Templar

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score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Mar 22 '12 at 18:27

2

In Windows there is free alternative that works the best: Notepad++

Go to "Search" -> "Find in Files". One may give directory, file pattern, set regular expressions then preview the matches and finally replace all files recursively.

answered Mar 22 '12 at 18:27

Ciantic

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score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:11

1

I'd go for bash + find + sed.

answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:11

Rafał Dowgird

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score 1 · Answer 14 · answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:12

1

jEdit's regex search&replace in files is pretty decent. Slightly overkill if you only use it for that, though. It also doesn't support the multi-expression-replace you asked for.

answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:12

Oliver Giesen

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score 1 · Answer 15 · answered Sep 19 '08 at 14:26

Vim for the rescue (and president ;-) ). Try:

vim -c "argdo! s:foo:bar:gci" <list_of_files>

(I do love Vim's -c switch, it's magic. Or if you had already in Vim, and opened the files, e.g.:

vim <list_of_files>

Just issue:

:bufdo! s:foo:bar:gci

Of course sed and perl is capable as well. HTH.

score 1 · Answer 16 · edited Apr 20 '16 at 09:05

1

if 'textpad' is a valid answer, I would suggest Sublime Text hands down.

Multi-cursor edits are an even more efficient way to make replacements in general I find, but its "Find in Files" is top tier for bulk regex/plain find replacements.

edited Apr 20 '16 at 09:05

gdvalderrama

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answered Jul 10 '15 at 20:17

ThorSummoner

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score 1 · Answer 17 · answered May 20 '20 at 16:24

1

If you are a Programmer: A lot of IDEs should do a good Job as well.

For me PyCharm worked quite nice:

Edit > Find > Replace in Path or Strg + Shift + R
Check Regex at the top

It has a live preview.

answered May 20 '20 at 16:24

CodePrinz

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score 1 · Answer 18 · answered Jun 12 '09 at 21:13

I have the luxury of Unix and Ubuntu; In both, I use gawk for anything that requires line-by-line search and replace, especially for line-by-line for substring(s). Recently, this was the fastest for processing 1100 changes against millions of lines in hundreds of files (one directory) On Ubuntu I am a fan of regexxer

 sudo apt-get install regexxer

score 0 · Answer 19 · answered Apr 10 '16 at 14:32

Brackets (source code, deb/Ubuntu, OSx and Windows) has a good visualization of results, permitting select them individually to apply substitution. You can search by standard text, case sensitive or not, and regex. Very important: you can exclude patterns of files and directories in the search.

score 0 · Answer 20 · answered Oct 03 '18 at 19:35

For at least 25 years, I've been using Emacs for large-scale replacements across large numbers of files. Run etags to specify any set of files to search through:

$ etags file1.txt file2.md dir1/*.yml dir2/*.json dir3/*.md

Then open Emacs and run tags-query-replace, which prompts for regex and replacement:

\b\(foo\)\b
\1bar

score 0 · Answer 21 · answered Jun 07 '09 at 21:12

0

I've found the tool RxFind useful (free OSS).

answered Jun 07 '09 at 21:12

Martin R-L

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What's the best tool to find and replace regular expressions over multiple files?

21 Answers21

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