[Cialug] find and replace strig in all files within a folder

[Afan Pasalic]

On 6/7/2012 10:57 PM, Tim Wilson wrote:
> Try this:
> find ./ -name "*.php" -exec sed -i
> "s/\(\$_SESSION\['\)status\('\]\)/\1value\2/g" {} \;
>
> I prefer to use parentheses, it helps prevent typos.  The "\1" and "\2"
> keeps what's enclosed in parentheses.  So "s/1\(2\)3\(4\)5\(6\)/\1\2\3/g"
> would turn "123456" into "246", and turn
> "s/1\(2\)3\(4\)5\(6\)/-\1-\2-\3-/g" into "-2-4-6-".
Oh, boy!
:(


> On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 9:08 PM, Todd Walton<tdwalton at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 7:35 PM,<afan at afan.net>  wrote:
>>> hi,
>>> what would be the easiest but most simplest way to find and replace
>> string
>>> "foo" with "bar" in all files within a folder (and all sub-folders)?
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> when tried
>>> $find ./ -name "*.php" -exec sed -i
>>> "s/\$_SESSION['status']/\$_SESSION['value']/g" {} \;
>>> didn't do anything
>> Perhaps it's seeing the brackets as denoting a list of characters.
>>  From the sed manual:
>>
>> [list]
>> [^list]
>>
>> Matches any single character in list: for example, [aeiou] matches all
>> vowels. A list may include sequences like char1-char2, which matches
>> any character between (inclusive) char1 and char2.
>>
>> A leading ^ reverses the meaning of list, so that it matches any
>> single character not in list. To include ] in the list, make it the
>> first character (after the ^ if needed), to include - in the list,
>> make it the first or last; to include ^ put it after the first
>> character.
>>
>> The characters $, *, ., [, and \ are normally not special within list.
>> For example, [\*] matches either ‘\’ or ‘*’, because the \ is not
>> special here. However, strings like [.ch.], [=a=], and [:space:] are
>> special within list and represent collating symbols, equivalence
>> classes, and character classes, respectively, and [ is therefore
>> special within list when it is followed by ., =, or :. Also, when not
>> in POSIXLY_CORRECT mode, special escapes like \n and \t are recognized
>> within list. See Escapes.
>>
>> --
>> Todd
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>
>