how to use sed to replace string containing parenthesis - sed

I am trying to use sed to replace the following but not working
replace datetime.now(pytz.utc) with datetime.utcnow() recursively
i have tried the following
grep -rl "datetime.now(pytz.utc)" . | xargs sed -i 's/datetime.now\(pytz.utc\)/datetime.utcnow\(\)/g'
mac command equivalent
LC_ALL=C
grep -e "datetime.now(pytz.utc)" -rl . | xargs sed -i '' 's/datetime.now\(pytz.utc\)/datetime.utcnow\(\)/g'
as you can see i tried to escape all the parentheses but does not work
anyone know how to properly use sed to replace datetime.now(pytz.utc) with datetime.utcnow()?

I tried to explain in the comments, but obviously I wasn't clear. Here are two potential solutions to your problem:
Using your 'grep/xargs' method:
grep -rl "datetime.now(pytz.utc)" . | xargs sed -i 's/datetime.now(pytz.utc)/datetime.utcnow()/g'
Using the 'find/exec' method:
find . -type f -exec sed -i 's/datetime.now(pytz.utc)/datetime.utcnow()/g' {} \;
Both options will replace "datetime.now(pytz.utc)" with "datetime.utcnow()" in the files found. Both answers are platform independent provided you have GNU sed, not BSD sed.

Related

Using Sed and Find with Grep Linux

I am writing a script that will saech for php files that contain a phrase and I would like that phrase replaced with a new one below is my little script but it is not working it searches ok but does not work with the search and replace section
find . -type f -name "*.php" -exec grep -H "define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');" {} \; | xargs sed -i "define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');/define('DB_HOST', '10.0.0.1');/g"
can someone explain to me what i am doing wrong
many thanks
Joe
did you forget the 's/' at the beggining of the sed expression? As in
sed 's/expression1/expression2/g'
You seem to have
sed 'espression1/expression2/g'
Edit
Another thing: You don't need to use xarg here. You can use multiple -exec flags - and it will to each only if all the previous succeeded:
find . -name '*.php' -exec grep 'whatever' {} \; -exec sed -i 's/whatever/you want/g' {} \;
This will work:
find . -type f -name "*.php" -exec grep -l "define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');" {} \; | xargs sed -i "s/define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');/define('DB_HOST', '10.0.0.1');/g"
Corrections
Missing s/ in sed search and replace command
use grep -l instead of grep -H

How to replace a string using Sed?

Suppose I have a string like this
<start><a></a><a></a><a></a></start>
I want to replace values inside <start></start> like this
<start><ab></ab><ab></ab><ab></ab><more></more><vale></value></start>
How do I do this using Sed?
Try this :
sed 's#<start>.*</start>#<start><ab></ab><ab></ab><ab></ab></start>#' file
I get this line with gnu sed :
sed -r 's#(<start>)(.*)(</start>)#echo "\1"$(echo "\2"\|sed "s:a>:ab>:g")"\3"#ge'
see example:
kent$ echo "<start><a></a><a></a><a></a><foo></foo><bar></bar></start>"|sed -r 's#(<start>)(.*)(</start>)#echo "\1"$(echo "\2"\|sed "s:a>:ab>:g")"\3"#ge'
<start><ab></ab><ab></ab><ab></ab><foo></foo><bar></bar></start>
note
this will replace the tags between <start>s which ending with a . which worked for your example. but if you have <aaa></aaa>:
you could do: (I break it into lines for better reading)
sed -r 's#(<start>)(.*)(</start>)
#echo "\1"$(echo "\2"\|sed "s:<a>:<ab>:g;s:</a>:</ab>:g")"\3"
#ge'
e.g.
kent$ echo "<start><a></a><a></a><a></a><aaa></aaa><aba></aba></start>" \
|sed -r 's#(<start>)(.*)(</start>)#echo "\1"$(echo "\2"\|sed "s:<a>:<ab>:g;s:</a>:</ab>:g")"\3"#ge'
<start><ab></ab><ab></ab><ab></ab><aaa></aaa><aba></aba></start>
sed 's/(\<\/?)a\>/\1ab\>/g' yourfile, though that would get <a></a> that was outside <start> as well...
grep -rl 'abc' a.txt | xargs sed -i 's/abc/def/g'

Replace token in text by the filename

I have a bunch of textfiles that contain the token -filename-. I need to replace it by the real path and filename of the file.
Thats what I have so far:
grep -lr -e '-filename-' *.txt | xargs sed -i
's/-filename-/therealname/g'
Is there a way to replace therealname with the name of the file?
Just do a bit more bash-fu
for x in *.txt; do
sed -i "s/-filename-/$x/g" $x;
done
Of course, the newlines are just for clarity. Feel free to cram that into one line.
like
for f in $(grep...) ; do sed -i "s,-filename-,$f,g" $f ; done
you mean?
With xargs it will be something like this.
grep ... | xargs -I% -n 1 sed -i "s,-filename-,%,g" %
for f in YOUR_FILE_LIST_MASK ; do
sed -i "s:-filename-:${f}" ${f}
done
can do it.

Change sed line separator to NUL to act as "xargs -0" prefilter?

I'm running a command line like this:
filename_listing_command | xargs -0 action_command
Where filename_listing_command uses null bytes to separate the files -- this is what xargs -0 wants to consume.
Problem is that I want to filter out some of the files. Something like this:
filename_listing_command | sed -e '/\.py/!d' | xargs ac
but I need to use xargs -0.
How do I change the line separator that sed wants from newline to NUL?
If you've hit this SO looking for an answer and are using GNU sed 4.2.2 or later, it now has a -z option which does what the OP is asking for.
Pipe it through grep:
filename_listing_command | grep -vzZ '\.py$' | filename_listing_command
The -z accepts null terminators on input and the -Z produces null terminators on output and the -v inverts the match (excludes).
Edit:
Try this if you prefer to use sed:
filename_listing_command | sed 's/[^\x0]*\.py\x0//g' | filename_listing_command
If none of your file names contain newline, then it may be easier to read a solution using GNU Parallel:
filename_listing_command | grep -v '\.py$' | parallel ac
Learn more about GNU Parallel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpaiGYxkSuQ
With help of Tom Hale and that answer we have:
sed -nzE "s/^$PREFIX(.*)/\1/p"

How to find and replace all occurrences of a string recursively in a directory tree? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How can I do a recursive find/replace of a string with awk or sed?
(37 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
Using just grep and sed, how do I replace all occurrences of:
a.example.com
with
b.example.com
within a text file under the /home/user/ directory tree recursively finding and replacing all occurrences in all files in sub-directories as well.
Try this:
find /home/user/ -type f | xargs sed -i 's/a\.example\.com/b.example.com/g'
In case you want to ignore dot directories
find . \( ! -regex '.*/\..*' \) -type f | xargs sed -i 's/a\.example\.com/b.example.com/g'
Edit: escaped dots in search expression
Try this:
grep -rl 'SearchString' ./ | xargs sed -i 's/REPLACESTRING/WITHTHIS/g'
grep -rl will recursively search for the SEARCHSTRING in the directories ./ and will replace the strings using sed.
Ex:
Replacing a name TOM with JERRY using search string as SWATKATS in directory CARTOONNETWORK
grep -rl 'SWATKATS' CARTOONNETWORK/ | xargs sed -i 's/TOM/JERRY/g'
This will replace TOM with JERRY in all the files and subdirectories under CARTOONNETWORK wherever it finds the string SWATKATS.
On macOS, none of the answers worked for me. I discovered that was due to differences in how sed works on macOS and other BSD systems compared to GNU.
In particular BSD sed takes the -i option but requires a suffix for the backup (but an empty suffix is permitted)
grep version from this answer.
grep -rl 'foo' ./ | LC_ALL=C xargs sed -i '' 's/foo/bar/g'
find version from this answer.
find . \( ! -regex '.*/\..*' \) -type f | LC_ALL=C xargs sed -i '' 's/foo/bar/g'
Don't omit the Regex to ignore . folders if you're in a Git repo. I realized that the hard way!
That LC_ALL=C option is to avoid getting sed: RE error: illegal byte sequence if sed finds a byte sequence that is not a valid UTF-8 character. That's another difference between BSD and GNU. Depending on the kind of files you are dealing with, you may not need it.
For some reason that is not clear to me, the grep version found more occurrences than the find one, which is why I recommend to use grep.
I know this is a really old question, but...
#vehomzzz's answer uses find and xargs when the questions says explicitly grep and sed only.
#EmployedRussian and #BrooksMoses tried to say it was a dup of awk and sed, but it's not - again, the question explicitly says grep and sed only.
So here is my solution, assuming you are using Bash as your shell:
OLDIFS=$IFS
IFS=$'\n'
for f in `grep -rl a.example.com .` # Use -irl instead of -rl for case insensitive search
do
sed -i 's/a\.example\.com/b.example.com/g' $f # Use /gi instead of /g for case insensitive search
done
IFS=$OLDIFS
If you are using a different shell, such as Unix SHell, let me know and I will try to find a syntax adjustment.
P.S.: Here's a one-liner:
OLDIFS=$IFS;IFS=$'\n';for f in `grep -rl a.example.com .`;do sed -i 's/a\.example\.com/b.example.com/g' $f;done;IFS=$OLDIFS
Sources:
Bash: Iterating over lines in a variable
grep(1) - Linux man page
Official Grep Manual
sed(1) - Linux man page
Official sed Manual
For me works the next command:
find /path/to/dir -name "file.txt" | xargs sed -i 's/string_to_replace/new_string/g'
if string contains slash 'path/to/dir' it can be replace with another character to separate, like '#' instead '/'.
For example: 's#string/to/replace#new/string#g'
We can try using the more powerful ripgrep as
rg "BYE_BYE_TEXT" ./ --files-with-matches | xargs sed -i "s/BYE_BYE_TEXT/WELCOME_TEXT/g"
Because ripgrep is good at finding and sed is great at replacing.
it is much simpler than that.
for i in `find *` ; do sed -i -- 's/search string/target string/g' $i; done
find i => will iterate over all the files in the folder and in subfolders.
sed -i => will replace in the files the relevant string if exists.
Try this command:
/home/user/ directory - find ./ -type f \
-exec sed -i -e 's/a.example.com/b.example.com/g' {} \;
The command below will search all the files recursively whose name matches the search pattern and will replace the string:
find /path/to/searchdir/ -name "serachpatter" -type f | xargs sed -i 's/stringone/StrIngTwo/g'
Also if you want to limit the depth of recursion you can put the limits as well:
find /path/to/searchdir/ -name "serachpatter" -type f -maxdepth 4 -mindepth 2 | xargs sed -i 's/stringone/StrIngTwo/g'