How can you find and replace text in a file using

Question

I am writing a batch file script using Windows command-line environment and want to change each occurrence of some text in a file (ex. "FOO") with another (ex. "BAR"). What is the simplest way to do that? Any built in functions?

Answer 1

Download Cygwin (free) and use unix-like commands at the Windows command line.

Your best bet: sed

Answer 2

I know I am late to the party..

Personally, I like the solution at: - http://www.dostips.com/DtTipsStringManipulation.php#Snippets.Replace

We also, use the Dedupe Function extensively to help us deliver approximately 500 e-mails daily via SMTP from: - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.msdos.batch.nt/sj8IUhMOq6o

and these both work natively with no extra tools or utilities needed.

REPLACER:

DEL New.txt
setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion
For /f "tokens=* delims= " %%a in (OLD.txt) do (
Set str=%%a
set str=!str:FOO=BAR!
echo !str!>>New.txt
)
ENDLOCAL

DEDUPLICATOR (note the use of -9 for an ABA number):

REM DE-DUPLICATE THE Mapping.txt FILE
REM THE DE-DUPLICATED FILE IS STORED AS new.txt

set MapFile=Mapping.txt
set ReplaceFile=New.txt

del %ReplaceFile%
::DelDupeText.bat
rem https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.msdos.batch.nt/sj8IUhMOq6o
setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion
for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=," %%a in (%MapFile%) do (
set str=%%a
rem Ref: http://www.dostips.com/DtTipsStringManipulation.php#Snippets.RightString
set str=!str:~-9!
set str2=%%a
set str3=%%a,%%b

find /i ^"!str!^" %MapFile%
find /i ^"!str!^" %ReplaceFile%
if errorlevel 1 echo !str3!>>%ReplaceFile%
)
ENDLOCAL

Thanks!

Answer 3

When you work with Git on Windows then simply fire up git-bash and use sed. Or, when using Windows 10, start "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows" (from the Linux subsystem) and use sed.

Its a stream editor, but can edit files directly by using the following command:

sed -i -e 's/foo/bar/g' filename

• -i option is used to edit in place on filename.
• -e option indicates a command to run.
  • s is used to replace the found expression "foo" with "bar" and g is used to replace any found matches.

---

Note by ereOn:

If you want to replace a string in versioned files only of a Git repository, you may want to use:

git ls-files <eventual subfolders & filters> | xargs sed -i -e 's/foo/bar/g'

which works wonders.

Answer 4

This is one thing that batch scripting just does not do well.

The script morechilli linked to will work for some files, but unfortunately it will choke on ones which contain characters such as pipes and ampersands.

VBScript is a better built-in tool for this task. See this article for an example: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/resources/qanda/feb05/hey0208.mspx

Answer 5

I don't think there's a way to do it with any built-in commands. I would suggest you download something like Gnuwin32 or UnxUtils and use the sed command (or download only sed):

sed -c s/FOO/BAR/g filename

Answer 6

Use powershell in .bat - for Windows 7+

encoding utf8 is optional, good for web sites

@echo off
set ffile='myfile.txt'
set fold='FOO'
set fnew='BAR'
powershell -Command "(gc %ffile%) -replace %fold%, %fnew% | Out-File %ffile% -encoding utf8"