Maybe you are looking for a particular phrase in log files or maybe you are a programmer and need to find some string that is inside many different code files?

Here is how you can find and replace a string in several text files.

For this example, the Oracle DBA wants to replace  strings NSR* in all rman scripts:

#!/usr/bin/ksh

for base in /oracle/scripts/rman/rcv/*.rcv
do
TMP=$(mktemp test.XXXXXX)
sed 's/NSR_SERVER=networker-hme0, NSR_DATA_VOLUME_POOL=BU UNT FULL/NSR_SERVER=freppax-laaf02h, NSR_DATA_VOLUME_POOL=FullHP/g' $base > "$TMP" && mv "$TMP" $base
done

export PS1="\$ORACLE_SID $LOGNAME@$(hostname):\${PWD}> "
stty erase ^H
export HISTSIZE=100
export EDITOR=vi
set -o vi
alias ll="ls -altr"
umask 022