find...sed...

acidjuice · 05-14-2005, 04:05 PM

dear all,

i'm not very familiar with this command therefore maybe someone generous can show me the begin on this.

i need to replace in a set of text files, all with extension .aj in all the subdirectories of a directory /home/main/*, the line:

Code:

MyVar=/etc/

into

Code:

MyVar=/lib/

i know i can do something like:

Code:

find ./ -name "*.aj" -exec sed -i .... {} \;

what in the ... space?

gbonvehi · 05-14-2005, 04:29 PM

I assume that will be only one line containing that var..
the general expression to search and replace is : s/regular-expression/replacement text/{flags}
So it will be something like:

Code:

-e 's/MyVar=\/etc\//MyVar=\/lib\//'

the -e tells sed to use that as the script.

acidjuice · 05-14-2005, 04:39 PM

thank you,

so basically i set myself in the /home/main directory and then run

Code:

find ./ -name "*.aj" -exec sed -i -e 's/MyVar=\/etc\//MyVar=\/lib\//' {}

is this correct? what is the ./ code then?

gbonvehi · 05-15-2005, 04:52 PM

./ means the current directory.

acidjuice · 05-16-2005, 03:58 AM

thank you.

jschiwal · 05-17-2005, 05:01 AM

If this is part of a script that might be started (even accidently) in a different directory you could use an absolute address; find /home/main/ instead of find ./ .

acidjuice · 05-19-2005, 04:08 PM

using this command i get this error:

Code:

find: missing argument to `-exec

anyone know what the correct statement would be?...

acidjuice · 05-19-2005, 04:51 PM

sorry for this missed the {} \; terminal part

jschiwal · 05-20-2005, 08:57 AM

If it is possible that the filenames found might contain whitespace characters, enclose the brackets in double quotes. -exec ... "{}" \;