Global search and replace

How can it be done without opening every file in an editor?

[MatthewHSE]

From another thread: [webmasterworld.com]

Global search and replace rocks ;)

I would love to have such a capability. Is there a certain tool that will do that or something? Right now I can open all my pages in my text editor and do a search-and-replace on all open documents, but is there a tool that will replace text on all documents in a directory, without needing to open all the files? If so, where can I find it?

[captainhannes]

Which OS? ;-)

As for Win, we use HomeSite from Macromedia in the company. It has the capability of an "extended search & replace" over "all open files" or over the whole diectory including an recursive "include subfolders" option.

Cheers,
Hannes.

[ergophobe]

See message #3 in this thread [webmasterworld.com] from a year or so ago. Links to a few good regex search and replace programs, free and otherwise.

Tom

[WeirdoPL]

I can write a very simplified version of global search&relpace in Pascal and send You the source code.

[Staffa]

If you are on Win get Stone's webwriter it does an extended search and replace in all the files in a directory without opening the files.
It's free and I've been using it for 3 years.

[amznVibe]

TFM search and replace [tfm.ro] is free

this one [funduc.com] is shareware but powerful (regex support, etc)

[danny]

This is a no-brainer one-liner using standard Unix tools.

perl -p -i -e 's/oldstring/newstring/g' $(find . -name \*.html)