SOLVED: Recursive Search and Replace in Nested Folders

[nkormanik]

Surely such utility programs exist, so I am mostly asking for your suggestions.

In a set of folders are text files.  I need to search for UNDERLINE characters, and change each to TAB characters.

Ideally I'd like the operation to be recursive, so that I can use the top containing folder, and all folders within will be drilled into, finding the text files, and changing the UNDERLINE to TAB.

Additionally, the program must allow me to put in TAB.  Maybe ASCII 9?  Could be an issue.

Thanks much.

Nicholas Kormanik

[Ath]

A lot of descent editors, like Notepad++, PsPad and others, support find/replace functions on external files, including subdirectories. Usually you can (optionally) specify regex-like or c-style characters like \t for a <tab>, etc.

[rjbull]

• Minitrue, a Search / Replace Utility
  Original version.  DOS, but with 32-bit version.  Console mode.  Free.
• MiniTrue
  MiniTrue updated by Jason Hood to fix some LFN issues for the 32-bit DOS version, adds a Win32 console port and fixes crashes when dealing with large files.  Free.
• HandyFile Find And Replace and Text Workbench
  Payware, different versions.
• FreeBee Find And Replace: A free version of HandyFile Find And Replace
  Not seen this before, not tried it, don't know if it recurses.
• HFFR last(?) free version
  Don't know if this one recurses through directories either (try asking Abterix)
• Replace Text, formerly called BK ReplaceEm
  Please note that Replace Text is no longer supported and has known problems with some Windows 7 installations.  Free.

[NigelH]

Swiss File Knife as well
http://stahlworks.co...wiss-file-knife.html

replace function
http://stahlworks.co...v/index.php?tool=rep

[MilesAhead]

I havn't tried this one but the features seem a match. Requires .NET 4 though. Might be alright if you are running W7 or later.  There may be a run-time download if you need the .NET 4.

[nkormanik]

Goodness, quite the assortment to choose from.  Thanks for all your help!

[MilesAhead]

Goodness, quite the assortment to choose from.  Thanks for all your help!

-nkormanik (December 18, 2012, 06:17 PM)

Out of curiosity what flavor of Windows are you running?

[nkormanik]

Still with good ol' XP Pro.

I guess at some point I'll have to move to Windows 8, huh.

[MilesAhead]

I wouldn't if I were you.
To be honest I haven't tried it. But from what I hear it's fine for devices but not great for desktops. If you have a desktop PC I'd go with W7.

There's nothing wrong with XP if it drives the devices you have. What kills OS first is usually device support.  Then eventually they are just obsolete for capacity. Things outgrow it. I loaded Win98 in a virtual machine about 6 months back just for grins. I was shocked to remember the entire supported file system was smaller than some of my downloads. 

[MilesAhead]

I just looked on the .NET 4 redist. download page. Apparently you can use it on XP if you have SP3 installed.

[nkormanik]

Installed without any problem.  Thanks.

As anticipated, in the programs tried so far, can't figure out how to put in a TAB character.  They seem to be geared for regular text.

[x16wda]

If you can stand a command line, the C-style option below might work.  I've used this one and gsar.exe both in various batch processes, can't recall offhand now why I needed both of them... maybe one of them didn't want to replace in place?  hmm... <walking off muttering to himself...>

Code: Text [Select]

1. Find And Replace Text  v1.99b                         by Lionello Lunesu
2.  
3. Usage: FART [options] [--] <wildcard>[,...] [find_string] [replace_string]
4.  
5. Options:
6.  -h, --help          Show this help message (ignores other options)
7.  -q, --quiet         Suppress output to stdio / stderr
8.  -V, --verbose       Show more information
9.  -r, --recursive     Process sub-folders recursively
10.  -c, --count         Only show filenames, match counts and totals
11.  -i, --ignore-case   Case insensitive text comparison
12.  -v, --invert        Print lines NOT containing the find string
13.  -n, --line-number   Print line number before each line (1-based)
14.  -w, --word          Match whole word (uses C syntax, like grep)
15.  -f, --filename      Find (and replace) filename instead of contents
16.  -B, --binary        Also search (and replace) in binary files (CAUTION)
17.  -C, --c-style       Allow C-style extended characters (\xFF\0\t\n\r\\ etc.)
18.      --cvs           Skip cvs dirs; execute "cvs edit" before changing files
19.      --svn           Skip svn dirs
20.      --remove        Remove all occurences of the find_string
21.  -a, --adapt         Adapt the case of replace_string to found string
22.  -b, --backup        Make a backup of each changed file
23.  -p, --preview       Do not change the files but print the changes

[nkormanik]

Nice job copying all those options.  Command line is fine.  Whatever gets the mission accomplished.  Thanks a lot.

Two programs so far do allow for TAB.  So, all this help has been well worth it.

[MilesAhead]

Esp. with raw substitution this kind of filtering is ideal for sed stream editor. Only hassle is it's a Linux command.  But you may find binary Windows ports.  All you need is something that searches every file for the target character, such as grep and when you find a hit, you pipe it into sed.

In fact the Windows port of the find command will do it. Depends how much of this type of thing you need to do. If these types of tasks pop up all the time it may be worth setting up a Linux shell like bash that natively handles Linux command line binaries ported to Windows.

There are dozens of sed "one liners" you can find on the web that can do quite a bit when it comes to substitutions.
For a one-shot it's not worth it though.

[skwire]

@Nick: Please let me know if/when you have a working solution and I'll mark this thread as solved and move it.  Thanks!   

[nkormanik]

The program I liked best was...

http://www.nodesoft.com/searchandreplace

Did a super job.

Thanks for that suggestion!

So, Skwire, unless anyone has something else to add, this thread is done.

[rjbull]

Esp. with raw substitution this kind of filtering is ideal for sed stream editor. Only hassle is it's a Linux command.  But you may find binary Windows ports.

-MilesAhead (December 18, 2012, 09:06 PM)

Here are two:

• UnxUtils.zip: GNU utilities for Win32
• super sed
  (this last from the seder's grab bag site)