Awk search and replace text in files

If you manage to take a deeper glimpse inside the ecosystem of the Linux operating system environment, you will discover that its built-in commands are sufficient enough to solve most of our computing problems. One such problem is the need to find and replace text, word, or string in a file especially when you are in a server environment.

Let this file be on the same path as your terminal instance. We will be using the cat command to flexible note the changes on our created test file. The power of this stream editor is in its easiness in accomplishing basic input streams transformation.

The sed command offers a quick, easy, and timeless approach in finding and replacing targeted text, words, or string patterns in a file. Please help me out!!!! RedHat Commands. OpenSolaris Commands. Linux Commands. SunOS Commands. FreeBSD Commands. Full Man Repository. Advanced Search. Contact Us. Forum Rules. Mark Forums Read. Thread Tools. View Public Profile for JamesByars. The following script will store the updated content in the temp.

This article showed you how to use bash scripts to replace particular strings in a file. The task to replace a string in a file should become easier for you after practicing the above examples. Examples: to replace all occurrences [logdir', ''] without [] with [logdir', os. In order to achieve as close to lightning speed or warp velocity as possible when doing find and replace across multiple files maybe even thousands or millions in massive filesystems such as huge code repos, I recommend using Ripgrep rg which is awesome and incredibly fast.

Unfortunately, it doesn't support find and replace in files, and according to the author probably never will , so we have to use some work-arounds. Use Ripgrep rg to find files containing the matches, then pipe a list of those files to sed to do the text replacement in those files:. Here is the 2nd work-around: use my rgr Ripgrep Replace wrapper script I have written around Ripgrep which adds the -R option to replace contents on your disk. Installation is simple.

Just follow the instructions at the top of that file. Usage is super simple too:. Since it's a wrapper around rg , it also provides access to all of Ripgrep's other options and features. Here is the full help menu at this moment, with more usage examples:. Ubuntu Community Ask! Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Find and replace text within a file using commands Ask Question. Asked 11 years ago. Active 8 days ago. Viewed 1. How can I find and replace specific words in a text file using command line?

Improve this question. Kaz Wolfe Jon Doe Jon Doe Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Akiva If you include regex special characters in your search sed will match them.

Add a -r flag if you want to use extended REs instead.