WARNING: use of version control with this utility is highly recommended!
This utility finds an input string and replaces it with a new string within all text files of the current directory, and any levels of subdirectories as specified. It shows you the original and replacement of each line with a change.
Have you ever had to modify a large codebase when you realized you had a poorly named dataset or variable mucking up your life? Have you dreaded breaking things you haven't touched in months by ripping through your code with sed?
Even under version control, large-scale find and replace can be a pain in the butt and a little nerve-wracking. This little utility helps the process by highlighting each individual complete line change, so you can visually confirm that your replacement code doesn't have unintended consequences.
The backbone of the utility is the extraordinarily powerful GNU sed. Thanks. This just makes it a little easier and a little less terrifying to use.
Download the sed_find_replace.sh and add it to your path. You may need to chmod +x to ensure it is executable. This was originally developed on RHEL but finalized on MacOX, so it should work on both.
Usage: [ -d MAXDEPTH ] [ -x EXTENSIONS ] [ -a ACCEPT_ALL ] [ -r RECURSE_FULL ] find_string replace_string
Options:
-d: Maximum depth of recursion into subfolders. E.g.-d=1will only search within the current directory. Default is no recursion.-r: Full recursion through all subdirectories.-a: Accept all changes without prompt (output for each line's replacement will still be printed). Default is to prompt the user to accept or reject each change.-x: Define file extensions for the script to consider, e.g.-x ".py .sh",-x "*.py *.sh", or-x "py sh"
Potential future options:
--filelist: Specify an external .txt file with all target files individually specified by file/filepaths on their own line. E.g.--filelist="~/Desktop/infiles.txt"--exclude-dir: Specify a directory to exclude, e.g.--exclude-dir=.svn
- Output stats, e.g. total files matching input string, total lines replaced
You could check out FAR (for "find and replace"). Seems great! Not a command line utility though. I actually haven't used it.
There are other GUI options out there as well. My favorite is probably the FART utility, for obvious reasons.
I wrote the first draft of these functions while working for Sam Asher and Paul Novosad, who were gracious enough to encourage me to continue to develop it into a utility and make it open source. Thanks a ton.