Recursive grep-sed yields error: sed: -e expression #1, char 1: unknown command: `?'

Asked Sep 12 '16 at 21:26

Active Sep 12 '16 at 21:26

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I am trying to follow the advice in past SO posts:

Find and replace with sed in directory and sub directories

and

awk/sed: How to do a recursive find/replace of a string?

but I'm getting an error with the following:

grep -r tmp_c . | xargs sed -i  ’s/tmp_c/tmp_c_TEST/g’

And this is producing the following error:

sed: -e expression #1, char 1: unknown command: `?'

I'm not getting anything especially helpful when googling this. Is there some kind of file I might have in my directory that would prompt this sort of error? What else should I investigate?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:01

Community

asked Sep 12 '16 at 21:26

helloB

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Try: `grep -lr tmp_c . | xargs sed -i 's/tmp_c/tmp_c_TEST/g'` – anubhava Sep 12 '16 at 21:29
So, what are you trying to do? – James Brown Sep 12 '16 at 21:34
1

`grep -r` will output the lines with the matches, not just the filenames. You should be using `grep -rl`, like in the questions you references. – Barmar Sep 12 '16 at 21:40
`’s/tmp_c/tmp_c_TEST/g’` should be `'s/tmp_c/tmp_c_TEST/g'` (no smart quotes). – melpomene Sep 12 '16 at 22:05

Recursive grep-sed yields error: sed: -e expression #1, char 1: unknown command: `?'

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