Guy Ellis Rocks

C# ASP.NET SQL SERVER

Powershell replace text in files and recurse subdirectories

I needed to go through every file in a folder and all of its sub directories and open each file and replace a given string. This is what I finally came up with. I'm sure that this can be improved on though...

function ReplaceText($fileInfo)
{
    if( $_.GetType().Name -ne 'FileInfo')
    {
        # i.e. reject DirectoryInfo and other types
         return
    }
    $old = 'my old text'
    $new = 'my new text'
    (Get-Content $fileInfo.FullName) | % {$_ -replace $old, $new} | Set-Content -path $fileInfo.FullName
    "Processed: " + $fileInfo.FullName
}

$loc = 'c:\my file\location'
cd $loc
$files = Get-ChildItem . -recurse

$files | % { ReplaceText( $_ ) }

Filed under: Powershell

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» Comments

  1. BobD avatar

    Thank you!! Sovled my problem.

    BobD — January 13, 2010 5:12 PM
  2. Ryan avatar

    It's worth pointing out that the search term in -replace isn't a string, it's an regular expression.

    So to match "[TOKEN]" you need to use the espace (/) character, resulting in "/[TOKEN/]".

    Ryan — January 21, 2010 4:22 AM
  3. guy ellis avatar

    Thanks Ryan - I had not realized that.

    guy ellis — January 21, 2010 11:04 AM
  4. Jeffrey Snover avatar

    Howdy Guy!

    This is how I would have written it. It is a bit more streamlined and efficient. It is still not SED but do you like this version any better? (We are improving our text processing release after release but honestly it is not our top priority [Object manipulation is]).

    $old = 'my old text'

    $new = 'my new text'

    Get-ChildItem c:\my file\location -Recurse |

    Where {$_ -IS [IO.FileInfo]} |

    % {

    Set-Content $_.FullName (Get-Content $_.FullName) -replace $old,$new)

    Write-Host "Processed: " + $_.FullName

    }

    Enjoy!

    Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]

    Distinguished Engineer

    Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: blogs.msdn.com/.../PowerShell

    Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at: www.microsoft.com/.../msh.mspx

    Jeffrey Snover — December 19, 2010 1:53 PM
  5. Tom avatar

    I'm new to Powershell, first day. I couldn't get Jeff's script to work. So I modified just a little and it is now working. Just in case, anyone else has an issue I hope this helps.

    $old = 'my old text'

    $new = 'my new text'

    Get-ChildItem c:\myfile\ -Recurse | Where {$_ -IS [IO.FileInfo]} |

    % {

    (Get-Content $_.FullName) -replace $old,$new | Set-Content $_.FullName

    Write-Host "Processed: " + $_.FullName

    }

    Tom — February 15, 2012 6:34 PM

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