CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shell
DEfusion
DEfusion

Reputation: 5613

Prepend to multiple files in bash/osx terminal

I would like to prepend some text to multiple files in bash, I've found this post that deals with prepend: prepend to a file one liner shell?

And I can find all the files I need to process using find:

find ./ -name "somename.txt"

But how do I combine the two using a pipe?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 6373

Answers (4)

Charlie Martin
Charlie Martin

Reputation: 112424

You've got several options. Easiest is probably sed:

find ./ -name somename.txt -exec sed -e '1i\
My new text here' {} \;

It'll be faster if you add '2q' to tell it you're done after prepanding the text, and if will happen in place in the file with the -i flag:

find ./ -name somename.txt -exec sed -i .bak -e '2q;1i\
My new text here' {} \;

To prepend multiple lines, you'll need to end each one with a backslash.

That leaves the original files around with a .bak extension.

Upvotes: 9

Johannes Weiss
Johannes Weiss

Reputation: 54111

find . -name "somefiles-*-.txt" -type f | while read line; do  sed -i 'iThis text gets prepended' -- "$line"; done

or

find . -name "somefiles-*-.txt" -type f | xargs sed -i 'iGets prepended' --

The best (I think):

find . -name "somefiles-*-.txt" -type f -exec sed -i 'iText that gets prepended (dont remove the i)' -- '{}' \;

Thanks for the missing "-hint. I added the important --s then, too.

Upvotes: 1

Paul Tomblin
Paul Tomblin

Reputation: 182878

find ./ -name "somename.txt" -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 prepend_stuff_to

Upvotes: -1

mitchnull
mitchnull

Reputation: 6331

find . -name "somename.txt" | while read a; do prepend_stuff_to "$a" ; done

or

find . -name "somename.txt -exec prepend_stuff_to "{}" \;

Upvotes: -1

Related Questions