W3cubDocs

/MariaDB

replace Utility

Description

The replace utility program changes strings in place in files or on the standard input. Invoke replace in one of the following ways:

shell> replace from to [from to] ... -- file_name [file_name] ...
shell> replace from to [from to] ... < file_name

"from" represents a string to look for and "to" represents its replacement. There can be one or more pairs of strings.

A from-string can contain these special characters:

Character Description
\^ Match start of line.
\$ Match end of line.
\b Match space-character, start of line or end of line. For an end \b the next replace starts looking at the end space-character. A \b alone in a string matches only a space-character

Use the -- option to indicate where the string-replacement list ends and the file names begin. Any file named on the command line is modified in place, so you may want to make a copy of the original before converting it. replace prints a message indicating which of the input files it actually modifies.

If the -- option is not given, replace reads standard input and writes to standard output.

replace uses a finite state machine to match longer strings first. It can be used to swap strings. For example, the following command swaps "a" and "b" in the given files, /file1 and file2:

shell> replace a b b a -- file1 file2 ...

The replace program is used by msql2mysql.

Options

replace supports the following options.

Option Description
-?, -I Display a help message and exit.
-#debug_options Enable debugging.
-s Silent mode. Print less information about what the program does.
-v Verbose mode. Print more information about what the program does.
-V Display version information and exit.
Content reproduced on this site is the property of its respective owners, and this content is not reviewed in advance by MariaDB. The views, information and opinions expressed by this content do not necessarily represent those of MariaDB or any other party.

© 2019 MariaDB
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License.
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/replace-utility/