Changing multiple files with SED
 

hi,
I need to change multiple files located in different directories
and i can by using SED:

for f in `find . -type f`; do sed -i 's/old/new/g' $f; done

However, ALL dates of the files will be changed
even if nothing has been modified inside the file

so i want only the dates of the files renewed, when the file has been modified!

how can i adhieve this?
Please provide me with example if possible...


Cheerz
Jolan

Hi.

Add a grep for "old"Then you'll only be running sed on files whch contain "old".

Dave

thanks.

do you know if its possible
to add a prompt? so that i can so yes or no
before it will be changed?

You'll probably want to do something like

thanks...

but i ran into another prob.
i need to grep a part of an url, before i can SED it...
but with this doesnt work:

grep " onMouseOver=\"window\.status='abc, def in \$var en ghi\.'; return true\"" * -R

the complet line where the url in a php file look like this:

echo " | <A HREF=\"http://www.domain$var.com/dir/file_nl.php?v1=$var&v2=$var2&file=abc\" onMouseOver=\"window.status='abc, abc in $var en abc.'; return true\">abc in $var</A>";

how to do this?
Cheerz!!

That's a pretty nasty string to be grepping for. Try using fgrep (or grep -F) instead of grep. I predict you'll still have to play around with escaping a bit to get it to match.

That, or you could be extremely lazy, and replace anything which you would have to escape with a '.', e.g. It's possible it will match things you don't want it to, but under the circumstances, I don't think it'll be a problem. I wouldn't use this for mission critical code, though.

Dave

what exactly makes it so nasty?

is it the " or ; ?

Cheerz!

The mix of ''', '"', ';' and '$'.

with this i get an error:
-sh: syntax error near unexpected token `done'

and to escape a string in SED do i use a . as well?

What's the full command you're running?

for f in `find . -type f`;
do if grep "http://www.$domain.com/dirs/file_nl.php?loc=$Var&var=$var&file=file" "$f";
read ANSWER; if [ "x$ANSWER" == "xyes" ];
then sed -i
's/http:\/\/www.$domain.com\/dirs\/file_nl.php?loc=$Var&var=$var&file=file
/http:\/\/www.$domain.com\/nl\/dirs\/$var\//g'
"$f";
fi;
done

Your 'then' should be before the 'read', not the 'sed'

aha, ok!

and is the forward slash correct,
in order to escape things in SED?

Your sed command looks OK in your last post - backslashes (\) to escape characters. To be completely accurate, you should escape all the '.'s in the first part of the sed expression, but it shouldn't be a problem here.

for f in `find . -type f`;
do if grep "http://www.$domain.com/dirs/file_nl.php?loc=$Var&var=$var&file=file" "$f";
then
read ANSWER; if [ "x$ANSWER" == "xyes" ];
sed -i
's/http:\/\/www\.$domain\.com\/dirs\/file_nl\.php?loc=$Var&var=$var&file=file
/http:\/\/www\.$domain\.com\/nl\/dirs\/$var\//g'
"$f"; fi; done

with this i get another error:
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `fi'