sreplace

StringREPLACE: a simple commandline utility for mass finding+replacing strings/words in text files.

Building

sreplace can be built for both windows and unix system.

• Windows: Open sreplace.sln with Visual Studio and press CTRL+SHIFT+B

• Unix/GCC:

  gcc -o sreplace main.c

Known working target systems: windows, cygwin, linux, KOS

Usage

The general idea behind sreplace is to specify FIND+REPLACE pairs, as well as a list of files/directories to search for FIND patterns that are then replaced. To prevent ambiguity, you should always invoke the utility as sreplace -ibet -- FIND1 REPLACE1 FIND2 REPLACE2 -- file.txt.

Flags:

• -f, --find: Instead of FIND+REPLACE pairs, all commandline strings are FIND, and rather than replace anything, print all matching locations as file:line:col:nchars:pattern\n
• -i, --icase: Ignore casing
• -b, --bound: Only match whole word (independently of--regex)
• -r, --regex: FIND patterns are regular expressions
  • NOTE: Currently only available on UNIX.
• -e, --escape: FIND and REPLACE undergo C-style control character expansion before being used
• -t, --keep-mtime: Preserve last-modified timestamps of modified files
• -R, --recursive: Accept directories in the list of files. Directories will be enumerated recursively, and all contained files are treated as if they were listed explicitly (but see --ext=LIST).
• --ext=LIST: Only scan files with extensions apart of LIST when they are encountered as the result of scanning a directory due to -R (example: --ext=.txt:.c:.h -- only find+replace .txt, .c and .h files)
• -n N, --max=N: Stop after N matches

Examples

Here are some examples:

• Replace data in streams

  $ echo Hello Wrold | sreplace -- Wrold World
  Hello World

• Inplace-modify files

  $ echo foo bar foobar > file
  $ sreplace -b -- bar baz -- file
  $ cat file
  foo baz foobar

• Find occurances

  $ echo foo bar foobar > file
  $ echo bar foo foobar >> file
  $ sreplace -fb -- foo bar -- file
  file:1:1:3:foo
  file:1:5:3:bar
  file:2:1:3:bar
  file:2:5:3:foo

• Replace non-printable characters (including \0 NUL)

  $ echo -e 'a\0b\0c\0d\0e' | sreplace -e -- '\0' '_'
  a_b_c_d_e

• Count occurances

  $ sreplace -fb -- opt_progname -- main.c | wc -l
  4