Here is a great little application that does a find and replace on a particular file, file type or file contents, then replaces it with a string of your choice. It can look in sub directories as well.
The small app is called FART, yes that’s right FART - Find And Replace Text!
Usage: FART [options] [--]
[,...] [find_string] [replace_string]Options
- -h, –help Show this help message (ignores other options)
- -q, –quiet Suppress output to stdio / stderr
- -V, –verbose Show more information
- -r, –recursive Process sub-folders recursively
- -c, –count Only show filenames, match counts and totals
- -i, –ignore-case Case insensitive text comparison
- -v, –invert Print lines NOT containing the find string
- -n, –line-number Print line number before each line (1-based)
- -w, –word Match whole word (uses C syntax, like grep)
- -f, –filename Find (and replace) filename instead of contents
- -B, –binary Also search (and replace) in binary files (CAUTION)
- -C, –c-style Allow C-style extended characters (\xFF\t\n\r\\ etc.)
- –cvs Skip cvs dirs; execute “cvs edit” before changing files
- –svn Skip svn dirs
- –remove Remove all occurences of the find_string
- -a, –adapt Adapt the case of replace_string to found string
- -b, –backup Make a backup of each changed file
- -p, –preview Do not change the files but print the changes
Example 1 (replace text, preview only)
fart -c -r -i -p *.txt original_text new_text
This will look for all .txt files in a sub directory, locate the
original_text string within the .txt file and change it to
new_text. The -p switch means it won't actually change anything because this is a preview, showing you how many strings it found within each .txt file.
Example 2 (replace text)
fart -c -r -i *.txt original_text new_text
Same as above except it will do the actual replacement.
Example 3 (remove text)
fart -r -i --remove *.txt "remove this text"
Rather than replacing one term for another this will remove the specified term.
NOTE: Use quotes around text if it contains spaces, tabs, etc.
Download FART from SourceForge.