dsr — deep search & replace

Fast recursive search-and-replace across file contents and file/folder names in a directory. Built in Rust with parallel content rewriting.

Build

cargo build --release   # binary at target/release/dsr

Usage

dsr <PATTERN> <REPLACEMENT> [PATH] [-p <SEARCH> <REPLACE>]... [OPTIONS]

PATH defaults to the current directory. The positional PATTERN / REPLACEMENT pair may be omitted if you supply at least one -p / --pair, in which case a lone positional is taken as PATH.

Options

Flag	Description
-p, --pair <SEARCH> <REPLACE>	Add another search/replacement pair (repeatable). Pairs apply in order, each over the previous result, and share --regex / --ignore-case.
-e, --regex	Treat PATTERN as a regular expression ($1/${name} expand in the replacement).
-i, --ignore-case	Case-insensitive matching.
-n, --dry-run	Show what would change without writing anything.
--names-only	Only rename files/folders, leave contents alone.
--contents-only	Only edit contents, leave names alone.
-a, --hidden	Include dotfiles/dot-directories.
--no-ignore	Don't respect .gitignore / .ignore.
--git	Git mode: require a repo, never touch .git, refuse to modify git-ignored paths (enforced even with --hidden).
--follow	Follow symlinks.
-v, --verbose	Print every change, not just the summary.
-s, --suggest	After the summary, report counts of case/separator variants of the search pattern(s) (e.g. DevenvTools, DEVENV_TOOLS) found in contents and names. Variants already covered by a specified pair are omitted. In case-sensitive runs it also lists the actual case-only spellings of each needle that occur (e.g. DevEnvTools).

Examples

# Preview a literal rename of "foo" -> "bar" everywhere
dsr foo bar ./src --dry-run --verbose

# Case-insensitive, apply for real
dsr foo bar ./src -i

# Regex with a capture group
dsr -e 'version=(\d+)' 'v$1' ./config

# Dry run that also flags other casings of the needle you may want to handle
dsr devenv-tools toolkit ./src --dry-run --suggest

# Several casings at once: rename every variant in a single pass
dsr devenv-tools toolkit -p DevenvTools Toolkit -p DEVENV_TOOLS TOOLKIT ./src

Behavior notes

• Contents are rewritten in parallel; renames run afterwards, deepest-path-first, so renaming a parent folder never invalidates a child path.
• Binary files (NUL byte in the first 8 KB) are skipped for content edits.
• By default .gitignored and hidden paths are skipped (-a / --no-ignore to include).
• A rename that would overwrite an existing path is reported as an error and skipped.
• Exit code is non-zero on fatal errors; per-path errors are collected and printed at the end.