Change first line recursively in all php files using bash

Question

I have a WordPress site and want to change first line of all php files recursively using bash. How should I do? I am not very familiar with bash.

Thanks!

What have you tried? Loop through files (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14823830/bash-for-loop-over-specific-files-in-a-directory) and make your change...? — naththedeveloper, Feb 20 '14 at 10:12

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 20 '14 at 11:42

5

Change first line to some other line:

sed -i '1s/.*/changed line/' *.php

Adding a line before first line:

sed -i '1s/^/changed line\n/' *.php

answered Feb 20 '14 at 11:42

anishsane

While it worked, it also modified all the line endings in my files. In vim I see ^M at the end. – hakunin Jan 21 '20 at 05:23

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:48

3

In order to modify the first line of the file, you can use this :

awk 'NR==1 {$0="what you want"} 1' *.php

Then to do it recursively, you can use a find first and then execute the awk command on every found file.

find . -name "*.php" -exec awk 'NR==1 {$0="what you want"} 1'

edited May 23 '17 at 11:48

Community

answered Feb 20 '14 at 10:22

Theox

There is a slight catch here. `awk` writes the o/p to stdout, not back to file. – anishsane Feb 20 '14 at 11:43
I used both of the responds and executed the following: find . -name "*.php" -exec sed -i '1 s/.*/ – pictoru Feb 20 '14 at 13:19

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 20 '14 at 13:22

2

I used both above answers and executed the following:

find . -name "*.php" -exec sed -i '1 s/.*/<?php/' '{}' \;

So thanks both of you Theox and anishsane for your help

answered Feb 20 '14 at 13:22

pictoru

3 Answers3