Ubuntu – Finding file and replacing word with some specific word

command linetext processing

Find some specific file and then once a file is found, I want some specific word in it and then replace it with finding word with a new one. Can I do it with a single line?

For example, I want to find a file 'file.txt' and in that file want to search read and replace it with write using a single-line command.

Best Answer

Execute:

find -type f -name "specificFileName" -exec sed -i.bak 's/foundWord/replaceWithWord/' '{}' \;

This will only replace first seen 'foundWord' with 'replaceWithWord', in case you wanted to replace all these 'foundWord's add sed's "g" enabler to having replace all seen

find -type f -name "specificFileName" -exec sed -i.bak 's/foundWord/replaceWithWord/g' '{}' \;

note: This will copies the 'specificFileName's as their backup files and name them with "specificFileName.bak", by dropping the "-i.bak" you will tell 'sed' to inplace replace,

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Find and replace text within a file using commands

sed -i 's/original/new/g' file.txt

Explanation:

sed = Stream EDitor
-i = in-place (i.e. save back to the original file)
The command string:
- s = the substitute command
- original = a regular expression describing the word to replace (or just the word itself)
- new = the text to replace it with
- g = global (i.e. replace all and not just the first occurrence)
file.txt = the file name

Ubuntu – How to replace multiple lines with single word in file(inplace replace)

This can be done very easily in perl:

$ perl -i -p0e 's/START.*?END/SINGLEWORD/s' file
$ cat file
My block of line starts from here 
SINGLEWORD
and end to here for example.

Explanation

-0 sets the line separator to null

-p apply the script given by -e to each line and print that line

The regexp modifier:

/s Treat string as single line. That is, change . to match any character whatsoever, even a newline, which normally it would not match.

Why the ?:

By default, a quantified subpattern is "greedy", that is, it will match as many times as possible (given a particular starting location) while still allowing the rest of the pattern to match. If you want it to match the minimum number of times possible, follow the quantifier with a ?.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Find and replace text within a file using commands

Ubuntu – How to replace multiple lines with single word in file(inplace replace)

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