Question

So this command will replace abc with XYZ in file.txt in directory tmp

sed -ie ‘s/abc/XYZ/g’ /tmp/file.txt

How do you do a find and replace like this across a large number of files in a directory with a .html extension in one go?

Answer 1

find /start/path -name *.html -exec sed -ie 's/abc/XYZ/g' '{}' \;

As by your request, here is what it does:

find /start/path -name *.html

Finds all files that glob to *.html, starting in /start/path

The -exec option tells find, to not just print out the files, but to run a command on them. Inside this command {} is replaced by the file. The -exec option hast to end with a semicolon, which we have to escape with a backslash, else bash will swallow it.

Again, from the OP’s special situation: Put the following into a file called replaceabc.sh

#!/bin/bash
find '/home/129224/domains/sandpit.uk-cpi.com/html/sshit' -name '*.html' -exec sed -ie 's/abc/XYZ/g' '{}' \;

then from the shell prompt

chmod 700 /path/to/replaceabc.sh
/path/to/replaceabc.sh