replace

replace2 is a command line utility for performing search-and-replace on files. It's similar to sed but there are a few differences: It is a fork of https://github.com/harthur/replace with rename of the command from replace to replace2.

• Modifies files when matches are found
• Recursive search on directories with -r
• Uses JavaScript syntax for regular expressions and replacement strings.

Install

With node.js and npm:

npm install replace2 -g

You can now use replace2 and search2 from the command line.

Examples

Replace all occurrences of "foo" with "bar" in files in the current directory:

replace2 'foo' 'bar' *

Replace in all files in a recursive search of the current directory:

replace2 'foo' 'bar' . -r

Replace only in test/file1.js and test/file2.js:

replace2 'foo' 'bar' test/file1.js test/file2.js

Replace all word pairs with "_" in middle with a "-":

replace2 '(\w+)_(\w+)' '$1-$2' *

Replace only in files with names matching *.js:

replace2 'foo' 'bar' . -r --include="*.js"

Don't replace in files with names matching *.min.js and *.py:

replace2 'foo' 'bar' . -r --exclude="*.min.js,*.py"

Preview the replacements without modifying any files:

replace2 'foo' 'bar' . -r --preview

See all the options:

replace2 -h

Search

There's also a search2 command. It's like grep, but with replace2's syntax.

search2 "setTimeout" . -r

Programmatic Usage

You can use replace from your JS program:

var replace = require("replace2");

replace({
  regex: "foo",
  replacement: "bar",
  paths: ['.'],
  recursive: true,
  silent: true,
});

More Details

Excludes

By default, replace2 and search2 will exclude files (binaries, images, etc) that match patterns in the "defaultignore" located in this directory.

On huge directories

If replace2 is taking too long on a large directory, try turning on the quiet flag with -q, only including the necessary file types with --include or limiting the lines shown in a preview with -n.

What it looks like