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https://github.com/piranha/goreplace

command line tool for search and replace
https://github.com/piranha/goreplace

go grep replace

Last synced: 27 days ago
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command line tool for search and replace

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README 

        
# Go Replace



Go Replace (gr) is a simple utility which can be used as replacement for grep +

sed combination in one of most popular cases - find files, which contain

something, possibly replace this with something else. Main points:



 - Reads `.hgignore`/`.gitignore` to skip files

 - Skips binaries

 - Familiar PCRE-like regexp syntax

 - Can perform replacements

 - Fast



Bonus:



 - Can search in file names with `-f` (i.e. a simple alternative to `find`)



[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/piranha/goreplace.png)](https://travis-ci.org/piranha/goreplace)



[Releases and changelog](https://github.com/piranha/goreplace/releases)



## Why



Why do thing which is done by grep, find, and sed? Well, for one - I grew tired

of typing long commands with pipes and ugly syntax. You want to search? Use

grep. Replace? Use find and sed! Different syntax, context switching,

etc. Switching from searching to replacing with gr is 'up one item in

history and add a replacement string', much simpler!



Besides, it's also faster than grep! Hard to believe, and it's a bit of cheating -

but gr by default ignores everything you have in your `.hgignore` and

`.gitignore` files, skipping binary files and compiled bytecodes (which you

usually don't want to touch anyway).



This is my reason to use it - less latency doing task I'm doing often.



## Installation



Just download a suitable binary from

[release page](https://github.com/piranha/goreplace/releases). Put this file in

your `$PATH` and rename it to `gr` to have easier access.



### Building from source



You can also install it from source, if that's your thing:



    go get github.com/piranha/goreplace



And you should be done. You have to have `$GOPATH` set for this to work (`go`

will put sources and generated binary there). Add `-u` flag there to update your

`gr`.



I prefer name `gr` to `goreplace`, so I link `gr` somewhere in my path (usually

in `~/bin`) to `$GOPATH/bin/goreplace`. **NOTE**: if you use `oh-my-zsh`, it

aliases `gr` to `git remote`, so you either should use another name (I propose

`gor`) or remove `gr` alias:



```

mkdir -p ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom && echo "unalias gr" >> ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/goreplace.zsh

```



## Usage



Usage is pretty simple, you can just run `gr` to see help on options. Basically

you just supply a regexp (or a simple string - it's a regexp always as well) as

an argument and gr will search for it in all files starting from the

current directory, just like this:



    gr somestring



Some directories and files can be ignored by default (`gr` is looking for your

`.hgignore`/`.gitignore` in parent directories), just run `gr` without any

arguments to see help message - it contains information about them.



And to replace:



    gr somestring -r replacement



It's performed in place and no backups are made (not that you need them, right?

You're using version control, aren't you?). Regular expression submatches

supported via `$1` syntax - see

[re2 documentation](https://code.google.com/p/re2/wiki/Syntax) for more

information about syntax and capabilities.