JM (Jason Meridth)

JM (Jason Meridth)

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11 Feb 2013

Use Git Grep to Replace Strings in Files in Your Git Repository

TL;DR

On Linux:

git grep -l 'original_text' | xargs sed -i 's/original_text/new_text/g'

On Mac:

git grep -l 'original_text' | xargs sed -i '' -e 's/original_text/new_text/g'

I needed to change a string in a bunch of files and I used the command above using git grep to do it. Worked like a charm.

The -l argument to git grep only returns the file names and not the location in the file like it usually does.

The -e argument is needed with the sed portion on OSX as stated by asmeurer in the comments

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