recusive ls/search/replace function!!

[Steven W. Orr]

On Tuesday, Apr 26th 2005 at 15:17 -0700, quoth bruce:

=>hi..
=>
=>can't figure this out. it's basic.. how can i do a find of all files in
=>underlying recursive dirs. also, how can i do a search/replace of txt in all
=>files that match a certain extension..

find . -type f 

Here's a handy lil thing. replace_str

#!/usr/bin/perl -i.old

$from_text = shift ;
$to_text = shift ;

eval "while( <> ) {

        s/$from_text/$to_text/go ;
        print ;
}" ;


find . -type f -name \*.certain | xargs replace_str old new

=>
=>ie, how do i find all files that end in 'int' in the underlying dirs...
=>or, how do i replace "foo' with 'dog' in all underlying dirs that end in
=>'ddf'..

find . -type f -name \*.int

find $(find . -type d -name \*.ddf) -type f | xargs replace_str foo dog

=>
=>i can see that 'ls -R * can/should get me all underlying files... but...
=>
=>i can also see that find . -name "*.int" would work to find the files... but
=>i'm not sure how to get the rest.
=>
=>-bruce
=>bedouglas at earthlink.net

Please learn to use xargs and not to use -exec in the find command. The 
-exec option will generate a seperate process for every filename match. 
The xargs command will collect as many arguments as it can to minimize the 
number of forks that occur.

-- 
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