Replacing string in file Unix

Question

I have a text file file1.txt on Unix. I'd like to produce another file file2.txt, in which I replace all occurrences of apple-pie with apple_pie. What command can I use?

Chris Seymour · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-01 21:03:06Z

18

Use sed to do a global substitution on file1.txt and redirect the output to file2.txt:

sed 's/apple-pie/apple_pie/g' file1.txt > file2.txt

answered Dec 1, 2012 at 21:03

Chris Seymour

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javaPlease42 · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-05 14:55:45Z

1

sed has better performance than awk but both will work for this search and replace. Reference

If you put the commands in a script (e.g., ksh, sh) then here is the syntax:

awk '{gsub(/apple-pie/,"apple_pie");print}' "file1.txt" > "file2.txt"
sed -e 's/apple-pie/apple_pie/g' "file1.txt" > "file2.txt"

edited May 5, 2014 at 14:55

answered May 1, 2014 at 20:01

javaPlease42

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