Find and replace with sed in directory and sub directories

linux command-line sed replace

320,700

Solution 1

Your find should look like that to avoid sending directory names to sed:

find ./ -type f -exec sed -i -e 's/apple/orange/g' {} \;

Solution 2

For larger s&r tasks it's better and faster to use grep and xargs, so, for example;

grep -rl 'apples' /dir_to_search_under | xargs sed -i 's/apples/oranges/g'

Solution 3

Since there are also macOS folks reading this one (as I did), the following code worked for me (on 10.14)

egrep -rl '<pattern>' <dir> | xargs -I@ sed -i '' 's/<arg1>/<arg2>/g' @

All other answers using -i and -e do not work on macOS.

Source

Solution 4

This worked for me:

find ./ -type f -exec sed -i '' 's#NEEDLE#REPLACEMENT#' *.php {} \;

Solution 5

grep -e apple your_site_root/**/*.* -s -l | xargs sed -i "" "s|apple|orage|"

View more solutions

320,700

hd.

Updated on July 08, 2022

Comments

hd. almost 2 years
I run this command to find and replace all occurrences of 'apple' with 'orange' in all files in root of my site:
```
find ./ -exec sed -i 's/apple/orange/g' {} \;
```
But it doesn't go through sub directories.

What is wrong with this command?

Here are some lines of output of find ./:
```
./index.php
./header.php
./fpd
./fpd/font
./fpd/font/desktop.ini
./fpd/font/courier.php
./fpd/font/symbol.php
```
- Jacob almost 13 years
  
  could you run find ./ and post some sample output? And the directory strucuture please. edit: thanks!
- Jacob almost 13 years
  
  Hm your find is correct, works for me with subdirs.
- carlpett almost 13 years
  
  How do you know it does not process subdirectories?
- hd. almost 13 years
  
  because it gives these errors: sed: couldn't edit ./fpd: not a regular file sed: couldn't edit ./fpd/font: not a regular file sed: couldn't edit ./fpd/font/makefont: not a regula
- hd. almost 13 years
  
  oh... i grep for apple and nothing found.they all were replaced. ;) thank you . you opened my eyes !!!
- tripleee about 8 years
  
  Possible duplicate of Awk/Sed: How to do a recursive find/replace of a string?
- user3167101 almost 8 years
  
  If using zsh, you can use e.g. src/**/.js.
- Yahor M about 6 years
  
  Answer you can find here: stackoverflow.com/a/49364510/5578292
- tripleee almost 5 years
  
  The error messages are unnerving, but the command actually does what you want. It's not correct to say it "doesn't work", though it's legitimate and useful to ask how to do this without those warning messages.
paulmelnikow over 10 years

You may need to change sed -i 's/apple/orange/g' to sed -i '' 's/apple/orange/g' to make this work.
paulmelnikow about 10 years

-i takes an argument: the extension used to save the temporary file. In GNU sed, looks like there's no space between -i and its argument, but in BSD sed there is… so BSD -i '' 's/foo/bar/' is equivalent to GNU -i 's/foo/bar/.
paulmelnikow about 10 years

Actually adding -e does not work on Mac OS. touch a b c d e followed by the command above produces a directory listing like this: a a-e b b-e c c-e d d-e e e-e.
mrodrigues almost 8 years

Thanks for this answer, it was very helpful! If in a git repository, it's even faster using git grep -l 'apples' | xargs sed -i 's/apples/oranges/g'
phuclv almost 7 years

he wants to find all files in sub directories contain that string and replace, not only a single file
kakoma over 6 years

For Mac OS, this answers stackoverflow.com/questions/19242275/… the RE error: illegal byte sequence
Kevin Cherepski about 6 years

For fish shell users, be sure to quote the empty braces '{}', because fish automatically expands the empty braces if not quoted.
Colin D about 6 years

Is there are shorter version of this? Pretty lengthy. Or a way to make it an alias/bash function?
knocte over 5 years

original question doesn't restrict to *.php files, there's also an .ini one
tripleee almost 5 years

The unquoted *.php is really incorrect; you just got lucky that it didn't get expanded in the starting directory because you didn't happen to have any matching files there.
aleric over 3 years

Restriction on file name could be obtained with -name *.php on the find command.
cacti5 over 3 years

If on macos, use xargs sed -i '' 's/apples/oranges/g'
quantum231 over 2 years

Can someone please explain what is the -exec and the {} \; at the end?
bob dylan over 2 years

On the mac the accepted answer does work [kind of] - but it spits out 'duplicate' files with <original-filename>-e which would need to be removed / piped into another command (to use verbatim). This method is better though and is still working for me (on 11.2.3)
Colin D over 2 years

could this be turned into a shortened alias?
NessDan about 2 years

If you're trying to replace something with a forward slash in it, you can use sed with | rather than /, e.g. ... xargs sed -i 's|mduuid/apples|mduuid/oranges|g' stackoverflow.com/questions/40714970/…