CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexsedfindpattern-matching
Recker
Recker

Reputation: 1973

find and replace strings in files in a particular directory

I have a pattern that I need to replace in my .hpp, .h, .cpp files in multiple directories.

I have read Find and replace a particular term in multiple files question for guidance. I am also using this tutorial but I am not able achieve what I intend to do. So here is my pattern.

throw some::lengthy::exception();

I want to replace it with this

throw CreateException(some::lengthy::exception());

How can I achieve this?

UPDATE:

Moreover, what if the some::lengthy::exception() part is variant such that it changes for every search result ? Something like

throw some::changing::text::exception();

will be converted to

throw CreateException(some::changing::text::exception());

Upvotes: 1

Views: 308

Answers (3)

fedorqui
fedorqui

Reputation: 289725

You can use the sed expression:

sed 's/throw some::lengthy::exception();/throw CreateException(some::lengthy::exception());/g'

And add it into a find command to check .h, .cpp and .hpp files (idea coming from List files with certain extensions with ls and grep):

find . -iregex '.*\.\(h\|cpp\|hpp\)'

All together:

find . -iregex '.*\.\(h\|cpp\|hpp\)' -exec sed -i.bak 's/throw some::lengthy::exception();/throw CreateException(some::lengthy::exception());/g' {} \;

Note the usage of sed -i.bak in order to to edits in place but create a file.bak backup file.

Variable pattern

If your pattern varies, you can use:

sed -r '/^throw/s/throw (.*);$/throw CreateException(\1);/' file

This does the replacement in the lines starting with throw. It catches everything after throw up to ; and prints it back surrounded by CreateException();`.

Test

$ cat a.hpp 
throw some::lengthy::exception();
throw you();
asdfasdf throw you();
$ sed -r '/^throw/s/throw (.*);$/throw CreateException(\1);/' a.hpp 
throw CreateException(some::lengthy::exception());
throw CreateException(you());
asdfasdf throw you();

Upvotes: 2

karthik manchala
karthik manchala

Reputation: 13640

You can use the following:

sed 's/\b(throw some::lengthy::exception());/throw CreateException(\1);/g'

Upvotes: 0

Avinash Raj
Avinash Raj

Reputation: 174706

You could try the below sed command.

sed 's/\bthrow some::lengthy::exception();/throw CreateException(some::lengthy::exception());/g' *.cpp

Add inline-edit -i param to save the changes.

Upvotes: 0

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