Subject: Re: search and replace tool
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: "'cygwin-list'" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 19:55:26 -0800

Rafael Kitover wrote:
> 
> Not really cygwin specific, you can do something like:
> 
> perl -pi -e 's/old text/new text/' `find /where -name '*.txt'`
> 
> note those are backticks surrounding the find.
> 
> Use -pi.bak to make backup files in case you screw up. You will of course need
> to know how to use regular expressions (see man perlretut). If you need to do
> multiline replaces, you should probably write a script, or use some other
> solution.

And if you're expecting a LOT of files and/or files with odd characters
(e.g. space, quote) in their filenames, try this variant:

find /where -name \*.txt -print0 | xargs -0 perl -pe 's/old/new/`

Brian

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