linux find and replace in multiple files

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

Is there a reason why all of these examples of linux find and replace in multiple files use find and grep to pipe into sed or perl. Why not just use sed or perl directly with something like this?

sed -i 's/echo/burnbaby/g' booboo*

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2

grep or find is only for narrowing the selection.

3

Just using wildcards in the command line works usually, but it breaks under any of these conditions:

  • If you want to apply more than 1 command
  • If the files where the command should be applied aren't all in the same directory
  • If there are too many files to fit on 1 command line
  • If you want to avoid "is a directory" error messages should a directory have a similar name as the files you want to modify