Search and replace with grep and perl

Question

I need to replace "vi_chiron" with "vi_huracan" from all the files below. I am using the following command line and also have changed the permission to full access for all the underlying files:

 grep -ri "vi_chiron" ./ | grep -v Header | xargs perl -e "s/vi_chiron/vi_huracan/" -pi

I am getting the error: "Can't open ./build/drivers_file.min:#: No such file or directory. " and many other similar errors. Any idea why ? Below is the permission for the file:

          ll build/drivers_file.min 
          -rwxrwxrwx 1 ask vi 5860 Mar 13 12:07 build/drivers_file.min

Answer 1

You can change your command in the following ways:

grep -ril "vi_chiron" . | xargs grep -vl Header | xargs perl -e "s/vi_chiron/vi_huracan/" -pi 

or

find . -type f -exec grep -ril "vi_chiron" | xargs grep -vl Header | xargs perl -e "s/vi_chiron/vi_huracan/" -pi

In order to manipulate all files that do not contain Header and change vi_chiron into vi_hurican.

If I were you, I would simplify the chain and do it the other way around:

grep -rvl Header . | xargs sed -i.bak 's/vi_chiron/vi_hurican/'

If you are confident enough change the -i.bak into -i in order to have sed not taking any backups.

Also note that your change and replace is not global, if you want to put it globally use: sed -i.bak 's/vi_chiron/vi_hurican/g' instead.

'-i[SUFFIX]' '--in-place[=SUFFIX]' This option specifies that files are to be edited in-place. GNU 'sed' does this by creating a temporary file and sending output to this file rather than to the standard output.(1).

 This option implies '-s'.

 When the end of the file is reached, the temporary file is renamed
 to the output file's original name.  The extension, if supplied, is
 used to modify the name of the old file before renaming the
 temporary file, thereby making a backup copy(2)).

 This rule is followed: if the extension doesn't contain a '*', then
 it is appended to the end of the current filename as a suffix; if
 the extension does contain one or more '*' characters, then _each_
 asterisk is replaced with the current filename.  This allows you to
 add a prefix to the backup file, instead of (or in addition to) a
 suffix, or even to place backup copies of the original files into
 another directory (provided the directory already exists).

 If no extension is supplied, the original file is overwritten
 without making a backup.

source: https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.txt