I have been trying to find how to do a batch find and replace in Terminal on Mac OS X for more than the past hour. I found different versions of code, but am having difficulty making it work. So far, I have found one string of code that works, but it only works for one term/character.
What I want to do is find and replace multiple characters in one text file, all at the same time.
For example:
Find §, replace with ก
Find Ø, replace with ด
Find ≠, replace with ห
Find £, replace with ้
The code that works so far is (but only for one character):
sed -i '' s/Ø/ด/ [textfile.txt]
Could anyone please help me out?
Your pattern of usage is so common that there is a specific utility you can use for it, namely tr
tr abc ABC < input.txt > output.txt
where you use two strings (here abc and ABC) to instruct tr on the substitutions you want (here, substitute a with A, b with B etc).
With sed, that's MUCH more general in its usage with respect to tr, to search and replace the first occurrence in every line it is
sed 's/src1/rep1/' < in > out
to search and replace every occurrence in every line you add a g switch to the s command
sed 's/src1/rep1/g' < in > out
eventually to do multiple search and replaces you must separate the s commands with a semicolon
sed 's/src1/rep1/g;s/src2/rep2/;s/src3/rep3/g' < in > out
Note that in the above example I used the g switch (line-wise global substitution) for the 1st and the 3rd find&replace and not for the 2nd one... your usage may be different but I hope that you've spotted the pattern, haven't you?