Recursively search and replace text in all files in #MacOS

find files based on file extension

use -print0 to terminate strings with null strings, instead of newline characters

This allows proper interpretation of strings with spaces

plays well with xargs -0

xargs and sed to replace with a regex string

use -0 to look though lists separated by null strings

use -i "" to ignore these null strings

find . -name '*.txt' -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i "" "s/form/forms/g"

While migrating Roam to LogSeq , I had to replace all :: with : , which roam uses as a shortcut page with different formatting, and which is unsupported on LogSeq.

find . -name '*.md' -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i "" "s/::/:/g"

The above command made it super easy

https://stackoverflow.com/a/17308739/1782471

LogSeq

Roam

tech journal

Recursively search and replace text in all files in #MacOS

Steps

Example

Usecase

Source