What’s the best way to do this, I have loads of files where I need to change the name of loads text in xml files, the files themselves are named .xdt and .pf.

Anyhow, I thought I could just do this by opening all the files in notepad++ (v7.5.4) and doing some kind of multiple find and replace. Doesn’t seem an option, in the clickable sense, but

Google suggests that if I was to do

Find: (Text1)|(Text2)|(Text3) etc etc etc (I’ll probably have about 50 of these I need to change across multiple files.)

Replace: (?1TextA)(?1TextB)(?1TextC) etc etc etc

But that’s not working.

Any ideas why that isn’t working. Or of another solution? Stuff doing this manually. I’ll be there for weeks.

It would be easy on a Linux based system! On windows I’d just install Cygwin which is a windows implementation of the Linux shell. Then run this (from memory):

sed -i ” ‘s/search/replace/g’ ./*.xml

If you’ve got a lot of search replace pairs then easiest to put them in a file, each search/replace pair on its own line like:

Fred  Barney

Call the file changes.txt then a simple loop in a script

while read -r line

do

# split the line (this is – -, two dashes)

set — ${line}

# Has to be double quotes around s///g to force variable expansion

sed -i ” “s/$1/$2/g” ./*.xml

done < changes.txt

Ah, Notepad++

As a developer, I’d be buggered without it.

However, I’m not sure it can do this. Is there any reason you can’t do multiple passes? Iy may appear to take yonks but in reality will probably take just as long as working out a more complex solution.

Can you write code? It’d be piss easy in c#/vb

I’d have thought Notepad++

But then I’d probly just fudge the arse off it in Excel/VBA as that’s what I tend to do with any quick & dirty bit of work.

Anyhow, I thought I could just do this by opening all the files in notepad++ (v7.5.4) and doing some kind of multiple find and replace.

It definitely lets you replace across multiple files. Go to the “Find In Files” bit in Notepad++. It has a Replace option.

Or do you mean it doesn’t let you do a complicated replace thing?

Find: (Text1)|(Text2)|(Text3) etc etc etc (I’ll probably have about 50 of these I need to change across multiple files.)

Replace: (?1TextA)(?1TextB)(?1TextC) etc etc etc

Not clear exactly what you are trying to do here? Is this meant to be a mapping? Like Text1 becomes 1TextA, Text2 becomes 1TextB, Text3 becomes 1TextC etc?

Not sure you can do that in regex.

Is there any pattern to the change that you want to make? That’s your best bet. Give me some examples and I’ll suggest some regex.

You should be able to do what you need to in Notepad ++ there’s a replace in all opened documents option and you can search with regular expressions.

What exactly do you want to replace?

Something like this? – appends a to all found filenames

Get a proper editor like Sublime text (free)

Go to the folder holding the files then in the menu: Find=>Find in files

In the search/replace bar put in the text to find and replace then click the three dots at the right hand side which lets you set filters for file types/folders then click replace. You’ll have to do this for each search/replace pair.

Even with regex,I’m pretty sure you can’t build a switch statement for conditional replaces, can you? It’ll only apply to the match.

Whitestone: you can do that in Notepad++ as well, but it sounds like the OP is trying to do it in one pass

Get a proper editor like Sublime text (free)

But you haven’t described anything that can’t be done in Notepad++ (which is very much “a proper editor”).

Is the xml consistency formatted – if not then a search and replace might not work very well and writing a c# program  to do it, or something to load it into a dom, would be more reliable.

If you want to do it in one pass (well one user operation) then a script is really the only way to do it. I’ve shown the Bash version. I don’t know Windows Powershell but I’d imagine there’s something similar in there.

Edit: A search gives this Powershell solution. No idea if it’s valid or not.

@GrahamS – I’d have added the sarcastic smiley but I don’t have the option to do so in the new forum. I have used Notepad++ BTW

whitestone, i’m very mush a powershell guy, but even I’d do this with sed in WSL 😛

Powershell replace is klunky at best, especially when you’re trying to do multiples…

gci -path “PathToFiles” | foreach {

(Get-Content $file.fullpath) -replace ‘sausage’, ‘bacon’ | Set-Content $file.fullpath

}

Notepad++/Search/Find in files.

You’ll need to do a pass for each thing you want to change.

 i’m very mush a powershell guy, but even I’d do this with sed in WSL

See my first response

I’ve used this for many years and it works perfectly:

http://www.fauland.com/af9_dl.htm

Allows you to build up multiple search/replace queries and then apply them to multiple files in one go.

I got it btw, notepad++ work, just hadn’t checked the regular expession button at the bottom. (been away testing it.)

Cheers for all the comments!

ie This works fine, just make sure to open all the files and replace across all documents, and make sure regular expressions is checked at the bottom! 🙂

Find: (Text1)|(Text2)|(Text3) etc etc etc (I’ll probably have about 50 of these I need to change across multiple files.)

Replace: (?1TextA)(?2TextB)(?3TextC) etc etc etc

I use UltraEdit, It’s fab, but I don’t think it’ll do multiple pairs at one time.

Personally, I’d stick the search & replace pairs in a CSV file & write a wee VB program to do it, but that’s because I haven’t seen the app that sharkbait suggested. It looks like the tool for the job.