How to find and replace a regex pattern in linux?

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by ethelyn , in category: General Help , a month ago

How to find and replace a regex pattern in linux?

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1 answer

by ari.olson , a month ago

@ethelyn 

To find and replace a regex pattern in Linux, you can use the sed command. The syntax for using sed with regex patterns is as follows:

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sed 's/pattern/replacement/flags' input_file > output_file


Here's a breakdown of the different components:

  • s: This is the substitute command of sed. It tells sed to search for a pattern and replace it.
  • pattern: This is the regex pattern you want to search for. You can use different regex metacharacters and operators here.
  • replacement: This is the replacement string for the pattern.
  • flags (optional): You can add different flags after the substitution command to modify its behavior. For example, g will perform a global substitution (replace all occurrences), and i will make the pattern case-insensitive.
  • input_file: This is the file you want to search and replace the pattern in.
  • output_file: This is the file where the modified version will be written.


Here's an example command to replace a regex pattern using sed:

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sed 's/foo/bar/g' input.txt > output.txt


This command will search for the pattern "foo" in the input.txt file and replace it with "bar", and then write the modified content to output.txt. The g flag is used to replace all occurrences of the pattern in the file.


Note that the sed command is case-sensitive by default. If you want to perform a case-insensitive search and replace, you can add the i flag:

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sed 's/foo/bar/gi' input.txt > output.txt


This command will perform a case-insensitive search for the pattern "foo" and replace it with "bar".