Find and replace text in files with the silver searcher and sed

Question

Heck I just can't remember ... I recently had a cool way to use ag with sed to do find and replace. The gist was simple, something like:

ag foo -l |  ... magic here ...   sed 's/foo/bar/g'

That doesn't work, but you might just know what does. Thanks!

PS. Three cheers for the Silver Searcher.

I don't know what do you want.. `-L` gives not-match filenames, what does your magic do there??? there is no "foo" in those files, you `sed 's/foo/.../'` ? — Kent, Aug 03 '18 at 20:23

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 03 '18 at 20:26

2

xargs is the magic you are looking for:

ag -l 'foo'|xargs sed -i 's/foo/abcd/g'

answered Aug 03 '18 at 20:26

Kent

I get an error with your suggestion: `sed: 1: "AppMain/State.elm": invalid command code A`. This is the first file my text is found in. BTW I am on a Mac. – Robert Aug 03 '18 at 20:33
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@Robert read my answer carefully, do copy and paste, replace the `foo` and `bar` by your values. you forgot the important `s`. if you are on a mac (bsd sed), you may need some option like `-E`, I don't know, read the man page. – Kent Aug 03 '18 at 20:44
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@Robert Sed on macOS requires an argument to the `-i` option, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5694228/sed-in-place-flag-that-works-both-on-mac-bsd-and-linux – Benjamin W. Aug 03 '18 at 21:09
Yes, thanks Benjamin, Mac (BSD) sed _is_ a bit different. As it explains in the link you posted, one way to make it work is to use the `-i.bak` option rather than just `-i`. As it also explains, the other way is to install Gnu sed with homebrew. – Robert Aug 04 '18 at 05:53

1 Answers1