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re: the regexp replacing tool

The command line tool for finding and replacing in text.

Purpose

There are many code editors with find and replace functionality, but sometimes you just want a simple tool that can do it at the command line, irregardless of whether it's source code or plain text. Enter replace.

replace uses what you already know, regular expression groups, to do the actual replacing. The syntax is:

set PATTERN = 'The (cat) went over the (hill) to find his friend (?P<friend>Mittens)`
replace $PATTERN path1 path2 -- dog bridge --friend=Scrappy

Breaking this down:

• set PATTERN = ...: this is the regular expression pattern we will use
• path1 path2: these are the files/directories to search for replacing
• $PATTERN: using our pattern in our command
• [FLAGS]: there are several flags you can pass:
• --0=dog: the regex group at index 0 should be replaced with dog.
• --1=bridge: the regex group at index 1 should be replaced with bridge.
• --friend=Scrappy: the regex group named friend should be replaced with Scrappy

Groups that are not specified will be ignored.

The given example would replace: The cat went over the hill to find his friend Mittens

With: The dog went over the bridge to find his friend Scrappy