Search and replace hundreds of strings in tens of thousands of files?

Posted by C Johnson on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by C Johnson
Published on 2010-04-21T02:41:02Z Indexed on 2010/04/21 2:43 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 326

Filed under:

regex

|

search-and-replace

|

multiple-files

I am looking into changing the file name of hundreds of files in a (C/C++) project that I work on. The problem is our software has tens of thousands of files that including (i.e. #include) these hundreds of files that will get changed. This looks like a maintenance nightmare. If I do this I will be stuck in Ultra-Edit for weeks, rolling hundreds of regex's by hand like so:

^\#include.*["<\\/]stupid_name.*$

with

#include <dir/new_name.h>

Such drudgery would be worse than peeling hundreds of potatoes in a sunken submarine in the antarctic with a spoon. I think it would rather be ideal to put the inputs and outputs into a table like so:

stupid_name.h <-> <dir/new_name.h>
stupid_nameb.h <-> <dir/new_nameb.h>
stupid_namec.h <-> <dir/new_namec.h>

and feed this into a regular expression engine / tool / app / etc...

My Ultimate Question: Is there a tool that will do that?

Bonus Question: Is it multi-threaded?

I looked at quite a few search and replace topics here on this website, and found lots of standard queries that asked a variant of the following question:

standard question: Replace one term in N files.

as opposed to:

my question: Replace N terms in N files.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about regex

Find multiple regex in each line and skip result if one of the regex doesn't match

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a list of variables: variables = ['VariableA', 'VariableB','VariableC'] which I'm going to search for, line by line ifile = open("temp.txt",'r') d = {} match = zeros(len(variables)) for line in ifile: emptyCells=0 for i in range(len(variables)): regex = r'('+variables[i]+r')[:|=|\(](-… >>> More
OWASP Regex Repository: Is this regex correct?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I was looking at the regular expression for validating various data types from the (OWASP Regex Repository). One of the regular expressions in there is called safetext and looks like: ^[a-zA-Z0-9\s.\-]+$ My first question is: Is this regular expression correct? complementary question If this… >>> More
Make a Perl-style regex interpreter behave like a basic or extended regex interpreter

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am writing a tool to help students learn regular expressions. I will probably be writing it in Java. The idea is this: the student types in a regular expression and the tool shows which parts of a text will get matched by the regex. Simple enough. But I want to support several different regex… >>> More
JS regex isn't matching, even thought it works with a regex tester

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm writing a piece of client-side javascript code that takes a function and finds the derivative of it, however, the regex that's supposed to match with the power rule fails to work in the context of the javascript program, even though it sucessfully matches when it's used with an independent regex… >>> More
c# RegEx with "|"

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to be able to check for a pattern with | in them. For example an expression like d*|*t should return true for a string like "dtest|test". I'm no regex hero so I just tried a couple of things, like: Regex Pattern = new Regex("s*\|*d"); //unable to build because of single backslash Regex Pattern… >>> More

Related posts about search-and-replace

Regex: Search and replace left side = to right side

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
How do I use regular expressions and search and replace to turn this [UserID] = <UserID, int,> [UserID] = 123123 [UserID] = asd123123 into [UserID] = [UserID] [UserID] = [UserID] [UserID] = [UserID] In other words I want to take everything from left side of the line up to the '=' character… >>> More
sed whole word search and replace

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, How do I search and replace whole words using sed? Doing sed -i 's/[oldtext]/[newtext]/g' will also replace partial matches of [oldtext] which I don't want it to do. Thanks, Kenneth >>> More
Perl Search and Replace Avoid Variable Interpolation

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm really getting my butt kicked here. I can not figure out how to write a search and replace that will properly find this string. String: $QData{"OrigFrom"} $Text{"wrote"}: Note: That is the actual STRING. Those are NOT variables. I didn't write it. I need to replace that string with nothing… >>> More
C# string "search and replace" using a regex

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to do a 2 rule "replace" -- my rules are, replace all open parens, "(" with a hyphen "-" and strip out all closing parens ")". So for example this: "foobar(baz2)" would become "foobar-baz2" I currently do it like this -- but, my hunch regex would be cleaner. myString.Replace("(", "-")… >>> More
Search and replace macro in Netbeans

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
How do I record (or write) search and replace macro in Netbeans? I want to record the actions I do in Ctrl+H dialog. >>> More