PHP and Sed for String Substitution | spiralbound.net

PHP and Sed for String Substitution

Data and Technology

Posted on December 12th, 2007

Written by cliff

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Tags
array, path, php, programming, sed, spaces, string, str_replace, substitution, unix, unix find
I needed to replace a string in several thousand files scattered all over the filesystem on one of our servers. I used find to create a list of files that needed to be changed, along with their complete path and called it "list.txt". It looked something like this:

/path/to/file/one/fileone.html /path/to/file/two/filetwo.php /path/to/file/three/filethree.htm /path/to/directory with spaces/filefour.txt and so on...

I worked out the "sed" command to do the in place editing, and Zach helped me whip up a quick PHP script to read the contents of "list.txt" into an array and iterate through it. He was also nice enough to show me how to use "str_replace" to escape any annoying spaces that happened to find their way into the names of directories.

PLAIN TEXT
PHP:
<?php

$files=file('list.txt');

foreach($files as $file)

{

$command='/bin/sed -i \'s/old-string/new-string/g\' '.str_replace(' ','\ ',$file);

exec($command);

}

?>
It's a handy little script that I'm sure I will find a use for later, so I thought I would put it up here.

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1 Comment

Take a look at some of the responses we've had to this article.
1. PHP Expert
  
  May 23rd
  Reply
  
  Very useful !
  
  Thanks
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  Saguenay-IT, (IT Outsourcing, SOA, PHP, ASP, Flex, ActionScript, JavaScript…)
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