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.

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.