How to Replace a string pattern with another string pattern inside all files in directories and subdirectories

Question

I'm in the process of re-structuring my website & have to re-arrange references within files. There is a directory that contains many sub-directories & php files. I'm after some kind of a command/script that can search for each & every file in that directory for this pattern & replace it with a custom pattern.

For Eg: i want to replace exact occurrences of one/two/three/ by /shopping/shop/ipad . In other words if any file contains some string For Eg:

location:index.php?p=one/two/three/abcdefg&aid

then it should be replaced by

location:index.php?p=/shopping/shop/ipad/abcdefg&aid

Note the content replacement should take place inside every file, in every directory / sub directory within a main directory (say the main directory name is abc & all sub directories & files are within abc). The directory names themselves should not be changed. How can i achieve this ? My server runs linux & i have root & shell access.

possible duplicate of [Awk/Sed: How to do a recursive find/replace of a string?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1583219/awk-sed-how-to-do-a-recursive-find-replace-of-a-string) — tripleee, Aug 15 '15 at 15:15

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 28 '12 at 22:40

1

sed is what you are looking for:

find .  -exec sed -i "s/one\/two\/three/shopping\/shop\/ipad/g" '{}' \;

answered Dec 28 '12 at 22:40

Trent Earl

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this will replace `one` even if there's **just** `one`, and not `one/two/three` – Rubens Dec 28 '12 at 22:43

Vijay · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-29T08:44:44.867

1

find . -type f|xargs perl -pi -e 's/one\/two\/three/shopping\/shop\/ipad/g'

tested and working fine.and it also doesnot replace if there is o nly one

you can also find it here

edited Dec 29 '12 at 08:44

answered Dec 29 '12 at 08:32

Vijay

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 30 '12 at 12:25

0

Try this:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i 's/one\/two\/three/shopping\/shop\/ipad/g'

edited Dec 30 '12 at 12:25

Vijay

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answered Dec 29 '12 at 18:19

knesenko

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How to Replace a string pattern with another string pattern inside all files in directories and subdirectories

3 Answers3