tlug: Re: search & replace (was: Grep for subdirectories?)

[Rex Walters <rex@example.com>]

On Mon, Oct 05, 1998 at 12:34:00PM +0000, Darren Cook wrote:
> 
> I've a similar question: How do I do a search and replace operation on
> files? I'm sure I've read/been told that you use grep to do this, but I
> can't find any mention when I do man grep.
> 
> I've got about 200 HTML files which contain a double-width underline
> (probably in shift-jis) in an IMG tag and it should be a single-width
> underline.

If you can define the pattern match as a regular expression, perl is
probably the best way to do this: 

    perl -pi.bak -e "s/match/replace/" *.html

Where "match" is the RE matching what you want, and "replace" is what
you want to replace it with.  The "-pi.bak" options tell perl to save
the original files with a .bak extension ("file47.html.bak") and to act
as a sed/awk-like filter.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "double-width underline".  If you can't
figure out a suitable regular expression, post some sample before &
after lines.

Regards,
-- 
Rex
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