Find and Replace?

duerra · 01-27-2004, 10:36 AM

Are there any command-line text editors with a find and replace feature? I am using ee, pico, and vi, but I have yet to see a find and replace feature in any of them.

Thanks

MarkusMan · 01-27-2004, 10:48 AM

sed is your friend

At the command prompt:

#sed -e 's/<find string>/<replace string>/g' <filename> > <newfilename> ; mv <filename> <filename.orig> ; mv <newfilename> <filename>

Hope this helps!

Or actually within vi you can go to command mode and type:

1,$s/<find string>/<replace with string>/g

1 = start at beginning
$ = go to end
s = substitute
g = globally (meaning all)

You can use a . instead of the 1 or $ to designate stopping or starting at the point where your prompt is also.

duerra · 01-27-2004, 10:52 AM

Wonderful!

Thank you =)

Gnuru · 01-27-2004, 11:25 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by MarkusMan
sed is your friend

At the command prompt:

#sed -e 's/<find string>/<replace string>/g' <filename> > <newfilename> ; mv <filename> <filename.orig> ; mv <newfilename> <filename>

Far too much typing!!!!

Try this:

perl -pi -e 's/find string/replace string/g' <file name>

MarkusMan · 01-27-2004, 11:31 AM

Can you do that within vi?

duerra · 01-27-2004, 11:46 AM

The vi command worked

SciYro · 01-27-2004, 06:16 PM

lol i guess thats why they are the advanced text editors, cuse u gotta do all that typing

, and are hard to learn..

MarkusMan · 01-27-2004, 06:19 PM

Technically you can just do

#sed -e 's/<find string>/<replace string>/g' <filename> > <newfilename>

OR

1,$s/ <find string>/<replace string>/g

within vi.

Unless you want to split hairs this is as easy as the perl version. I was giving him a way to back up the file in case something got hosed also, hence the extra information.

Gnuru · 01-28-2004, 04:01 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by MarkusMan
I was giving him a way to back up the file in case something got hosed also, hence the extra information.

You can also do this easily in perl:

# perl -pi'.orig' -e 's/find string/replace string/g' <file name>

The original unmodified file will be saved with the '.orig' suffix!

Gnuru · 01-28-2004, 04:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by duerra
Are there any command-line text editors with a find and replace feature? I am using ee, pico, and vi, but I have yet to see a find and replace feature in any of them.

Hi Duerra, by command-line, do you mean console?

If so emacs has find and replace that you can access by:

M-x replace-string

or

M-x replace-regexp