How to replace text within files without opening them?

There has got to be something out there that I can use to replace text WITHIN files without opening them. Does anyone know such a utility?

I have hundreds of files containing a certain URL which I want to replace with another URL. The same URL is being changed to another in all files.

TIA.

 

"InfoRapid Search & Replace" is a lovely little utility that will do that sort of thing. I use it to search for errors in log files, but it will do replacement in multiple files too.

It can be downloaded from www.inforapid.com

 

WOW! Thanks so very much! I have asked this question on various newsgroups on the Internet before, but not a single tip has ever come my way! This is the first time I am learning that there is such a utility, indeed!

I was actually going to try using Dreamweaver, as these are Internet-related files, but I was told that it might not work.

I am heading over there now. This is going to make my life a lot less hairy!

Regards,

 

You gotta love this place and the whole Internationalist behavior of the internet.

UK guy responding to a Canadian question on a forum that is heavily US but run by an Admin from Malta (and none will have ever met in person) to suggest a German written utility.

 

That is the wonders of the Internet! It can be used for so much good, as it is being done here, at the same time for so much evil, elsewhere. No library in this galaxy can be so all-encompassing, resourceful, and massive as the Internet.

I could not even imagine 25 years ago that one could comfortably sit in one's home and be able to accomplish so much and meet so many nice people around the planet! WOW!

 

It's true - I am very nice. Honest!

Keeping with the main thread, last night I found another utility: AJC Grep that looks as though it will do the same sort of thing. The one thing I can't do with InfoRapid is extract a text search result. I was gathering information to start work on a linux grep tool to do it and I found a link to this software. I haven't had a chance to play with it, but it looks interesting.

As for the wonder of the web: I've been on the web since the early ninties. I remember being shown this service "that's just like Gopher but with pictures ". Installing Mozaic on my PC and surfing around (nothing like a postgraduate course to give you plenty of time to browse). Recently I've been remembering the good old days when you could find sound clips for Mel Brooks films, when the only e-mails you got where from people you knew or had met on the web, when you could flame new newsgroups on a rainy day and be the hero of the coffee room. Recently it has been so sad to do things like search for a manual for an old CD player and end up trawling through pages full of advertisement.

However, there is a bright side. The Open source movement is the epitome of what the web used to be about and is thriving. Some of the best software about now is open source. And as you point out there are still groups like the contributors to Windows BBS out here in the internet who make the place worth spending time in.

 

Ditto, ditto, and ditto again

The WWW and Usenet have evolved - some for the better, some for the worse. I am grateful to this BBS and some of the people who use it.

Thanks for this software name, as well. I will check it out.

 

I had a good play with AJC Grep last night. The search and extraction is more powerful than the InfoRapid tool, but also more complicated. It allowed me to pick data for a large number of text pages and extract the data into a comma delimited file, which is what I was trying to do. However, it is based on Regular Expressions which I've only recently started to use, and getting the syntax right is tricky.

The software is also Beta and feels like it (bit of a cheek them asking payment for beta - have to see if I can get everything done in the 30 day trial period!).

I think I will stick with InfoRapid for day to day log checking, and look to the GREP tool for one offs.

 

Well, InfoRapid did not work I needed to change URLs in RAM files for my music Web sites. No luck.

 

AJC Grep here we come then!!!!

There's also a "Windows GREP" program if you search on Google, though I think that just gives you the abbility to run Grep commands on a Windows system. GREP will do the job I think, but it's not the easiest syntax to follow.

This is the sort of application where UNIX scripting utilities come into their own. If you do this a lot, day in day out perhaps doing it on a Linux system may be worth considering! If you can't find a windows application to do the job, the other alternative is to write your own!