Replace a path in many text files in linux

Question

Please help me replace the path in multiple text files in a one-liner.

Suppose I have /home/shyam/Raghav/2014/12_dec/31122014/ in my text files and I want it to be replaced with /home/shyam/Raghav/12_dec/31122014, how can I do it?

Answer 1

In a shell

cat original_file_prefix.* | sed 's/[" ]//g' > new_file_name

Or open up your files in vim and type the following (you'll have to run it on all though)

:%s/[" ]//g

That should get rid of the quotes and spaces.

Answer 2

Try with this command:

sed -i 's/\/home\/shyam\/Raghav\/2014\/12_dec\/31122014\//\/home\/shyam\/Raghav\/12_dec\/31122014/g' files*

-i option edit files in place.

Replace files* with your desired search pattern.

Note that this replace /home/shyam/Raghav/2014/12_dec/31122014/ with /home/shyam/Raghav/12_dec/31122014 as you suggest. Without final / on the result. If you want it, replace /g with \//g at the end of the command.

Answer 3

sed -i 's:/home/shyam/Raghav/2014/12_dec/31122014/:/home/shyam/Raghav/12_dec/31122014:g' files*.txt

Answer 4

To change all the paths in multiple text files, I'd recommend to open all those files in a split window. i.e
'vim -o [file1] [file2] [file3] ...'
You will now see all the files are opened in a seperate ViM buffers. Now, to replace the reuired text in ALL of the buffers, you can issue:
':windo %s/[SEARCH_PATTERN]/[REPLACE_PATTERN]/g'
And that should issue text substitution command in ALL of the buffers.

Your command should be then:
:windo %s/\/home\/shyam\/Raghav\/2014\/12_dec\/31122014\//\/home\/shyam\/Raghav\/12_dec\/31122014'

Hope it helps.