Regexplace

Regexplace is a simple tool to change multiple files within one directory structure. The idea is to search for files and replace within all this files a given string multiple times. On Linux there are multpiple tools that can be used to achieve this but since I needed that on Windows as well. I hacked/copied this tool together. I haven’t used it on Windows for a few years now but it should still work.

The original script was from the Activestate Python Cookbok. Some times it is necessary to change an entry in more then one file. I made some small changes to the original script to get it easier to use.

Future Ideas

A Simple gui which lets you enter the text to search and replace and some simple file selection could help to make this tool a little helper without the need to learn some fancy shell commands.

Usage of the Script

usage: regexplace.py [options] dirname search-regexp replace-string

options:
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -f FILEREGEX, --files=FILEREGEX
                        set the regular expression of files to search through.
                        The  default vaule is: '.*' (All files)
  -i IGNOREFILEREGEX, --ignorefiles=IGNOREFILEREGEX
                        set the regualr expression for the files to ignore.
                        This parameter applies as well to the directory on the
                        recursive search. The default value is: '\..*' (Ignore
                        files with leading dot)
  -r, --recursive       Prse files in subdirectories recursively.

Examples

A simple example where I want to change the text TEST in all the file in the directory /home/user/test to ERROR. I could call the script as follow:

$ python regexplace.py /home/user/test TEST ERROR

This will change all the files in the directory test but not in the subdirectories for this it would be necessary to add the -r switch.

$ python regexplace.py -r /home/user/test TEST ERROR

If I only want to change the .cpp and .h files. I would add the following regex for the files.

$ python regexplace.py -r -f "(.*\.cpp)|(.*\.h)" /home/user/test TEST ERROR

If I want to change all files but not the files in the bin directory I add a regex for this directory. But i will leave the rule for ignoring dot files.

$ python regexplace.py -r -f "(.*\.cpp)|(.*\.h)" -i "(\..*)|(bin)" /home/user/test TEST ERROR

For a description of the the regex syntax see the python documentation.