To search and replace in VI, you have to use the “substitute” command, which looks like this:

[range]s/[search_string]/[replacement_string]/[options]

Examples

To search and replace all occurrences of OLD with NEW, type:

:%s/OLD/NEW/g

To search and replace all occurrences of OLD with NEW and ask for confirmation with each substitution, type:

:%s/OLD/NEW/gc

To search and replace all occurrences of OLD with NEW between lines 11 and 20, type:

:11,20s/OLD/NEW/g

To search and replace all occurrences of OLD with NEW from the current line to the end of the file, type:

:,$s/OLD/NEW/g

To search and replace all occurrences of OLD with NEW in the current line and the next 10 lines, type:

:,+10s/OLD/NEW/g

To search and replace all occurrences of OLD with NEW from the current line to the first line that contains the string JOUMA, type:

:,/JOUMA/s/OLD/NEW/g

Tags: replace, search, substitute, vi, vim

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Linux, Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.