BASH: recursive program to replace text in a tree of files

Question

I am completely new at Bash but I just can't seem to find a way to make it do what I want.

Imagine you have a tree directory with 2 files: /top.php and /test/bottom.php

How do I make my function look and replace say "hello" into "bonjour" in /top.php AND in /test/bottom.php?

So far the only way I have found to do this is by calling the same function twice with a different depth level:

find ./*.php -type f -exec sed -i 's/hello/bonjour/' {} \;
find ./*/*.php -type f -exec sed -i 's/hello/bonjour/' {} \;

Surely there's a recursive way to do this in one line?

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) — AncientSwordRage, May 07 '15 at 08:17

score 37 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 21 '11 at 20:09

37

Use an actual pattern for find instead of shell wildcard expansion:

find . -name '*.php' -type f -exec sed -i 's/hello/bonjour/' {} \;

answered Nov 21 '11 at 20:09

thiton

Yours worked perfect! I'd upvote it if I could but I don't have the required amount of reputation yet – Erken Nov 21 '11 at 20:16
1

@Erken: Thanks. You should have the reputation to accept the answer (the checkmark below the number of votes). Which is the correct response if it works, anyway :-). – thiton Nov 21 '11 at 20:17
Perfect, got it! Thanks a lot you guys, you've been amazingly fast!! oO – Erken Nov 21 '11 at 20:20
Thanks. This is helping get bsdgames built under cygwin. – xizdaqrian Oct 30 '14 at 17:16
How can i see the log of this command to make sure everything went fine? – Jitesh Sojitra Sep 15 '17 at 15:34

sehe · Answer 2 · 2011-11-21T20:19:17.090

2

Close:

find -iname '*.php' -type f -exec sed -i 's/hello/bonjour/' {} \;

Or

find -iname '*.php' -type f -print0 |
     xargs -0 sed -i 's/hello/bonjour/'

edited Nov 21 '11 at 20:19

answered Nov 21 '11 at 20:10

sehe

the first solution you gave didn't work. I haven't tried the second one but the solution given by thiton was more straight forward – Erken Nov 21 '11 at 20:18
@Erken: that is because you had more files in the top directory than the question described. Learn to quote your wildcards if you don't want them expanded. – sehe Nov 21 '11 at 20:19

score -2 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 21 '11 at 20:09

-2

Use xargs and grep:

find . -type f | grep php$ | xargs -n1 -i sed -i 's/hello/bonjour/' {}

Here's how it works:

Find all files in-and-below current directory:

find . -type f

Include just those files ending in php:

grep php$

Take each line and apply sed to it:

xargs -n1 -i sed -i 's/hello/bonjour/' {}

answered Nov 21 '11 at 20:09

Stephen Gross

First of all, don't put spaces in your filenames! :) Secondly, just quote-enclose the "{}" portion and you should be ok. – Stephen Gross Nov 21 '11 at 20:12
3

Nope. Grep/xargs will kill your kittens. – sehe Nov 21 '11 at 20:13
1

@StephenGross: No, actually. The problem is with xargs and its concept of a delimiter. – thiton Nov 21 '11 at 20:13
Ah, good point. Well, in that case, my first recommendation stands: Don't put spaces in your filenames. – Stephen Gross Nov 21 '11 at 20:16
1

@StephenGross: A more unworkable piece of advice I've never heard. How about just writing good shell code? – sorpigal Nov 22 '11 at 00:37
@Sorpigal I was just kidding :) – Stephen Gross Nov 22 '11 at 16:35

3 Answers3