Using sed on several files at once

davholla · 05-05-2004, 11:29 AM

I have looked for this but no joy.

I know
sed s/x/y/g file1 file1
changes all the 'x's to 'y' in file1.
However I want to do this to multiple files at once.
What is the best way to do this.
(My shell scripting is rusty).

acid_kewpie · 05-05-2004, 03:04 PM

Code:

for i in file1 file2 file3
do
  sed ....... $i $i
done

Tinkster · 05-05-2004, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by acid_kewpie

Code:

for i in file1 file2 file3 do sed ....... $i $i done

If sed -V >= 4

Code:

  sed -i ....... $i

If sed < 4

Code:

  sed ....... $i > ./tmp
  mv ./tmp $i

Blinker_Fluid · 05-05-2004, 03:49 PM

or
cat file1 file2 file3 | sed 's/x/y/g'

davholla · 05-06-2004, 04:13 AM

I have tired this but I just can not get them to work.
Surely sed can has to go a new file not the old one.

homey · 05-06-2004, 08:21 AM

Here is an example where the changes are made to all of the .txt files.

for i in *.txt; do j=`echo $i | sed -e 's/x/y/g'`; mv "$i" "$j"; done

Tinkster · 05-06-2004, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by homey
Here is an example where the changes are made to all of the .txt files.

for i in *.txt; do j=`echo $i | sed -e 's/x/y/g'`; mv "$i" "$j"; done

That's just renaming the files, replacing a x
in the files name with a y, rather than
changing the files contents?

Cheers,
Tink

Tinkster · 05-06-2004, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by davholla
I have tired this but I just can not get them to work.
Surely sed can has to go a new file not the old one.

Which version of sed are you using?

Tricky's script with my version dependent variations
should work (works here, with sed 4.0.9 in the -i
variant (in-place replacement).

Cheers,
Tink

davholla · 05-06-2004, 03:17 PM

I don't know what version of sed.
It was HP unix at work I wanted to do this but using Suse 8.2 at home I get the same it only works if you makes the changes to a new version of the file

Tinkster · 05-06-2004, 03:34 PM

sed -V

homey · 05-06-2004, 04:00 PM

Guess I should have used cat instead of echo.

Something like this....

Code:

#!/bin/bash

for i in *.txt; do
cat $i | sed -e 's/x/y/g' > $i
done

ruiseixas · 05-12-2004, 06:39 AM

Hi.

I have the same problem, but I solve it, with out the need of any scrypt and without the side effect of changing the permissions or the owner of the file, because the mv command.

You say that

Quote:

sed s/x/y/g file1 file1
changes all the 'x's to 'y' in file1.

but is not truth, I try and do not work, even for a single file :-( ...
that because the sed is a little limited, they can't change a file while reading him.

But i find a simple way of do what you want, a simple command, nothing more nothing less.

The command is the follow.

Code:

find . -name "*.html" -exec sh -c 'sed "s/x/y/g" $0 > $0.tmp; cat $0.tmp > $0; rm $0.tmp' {} \;

This command it's simple to change to your needs, and define what files do you wnat to change or not.
And if you dont want to go through the subfolders you can just add

Code:

-maxdepth 0

to the find command.
You can type

Code:

man find

to know more about it.

And remember, if you want to find the solution, it's because find is the solution :-)
Just kidding...

basher400 · 04-03-2005, 07:47 AM

I have bit more complicated problem I can't figure out how to solve.

I need to search and replace a pattern in an unknow number of files in an unknown number of folders.

i'm using this to list them:
ls jaras/200*/dan/*.html

in every file like this I need to replace 'romer' with 'romaz'.
all I know is that this is the sed format:
sed -e 's/romer/romaz/g' *.html

anyone?