replace looks for all occurrences of string from and replaces it with string to. You can specify one or more pairs of strings to search/replace in a single replace command.

Use the -- option to indicate where the string-replacement list ends and the file names begin. In this case, any file named on the command line is modified in place, so you may want to make a copy of the original before converting it. replace prints a message indicating which of the input files actually got modifies.

If the -- option is not given, replace reads the standard input and writes to the standard output.

replace from to [from to] ... -- file_name [file_name] ...

replace from to [from to] ... < file_name

Options

Tip:

The replace command is primarily used with msql2mysql although can still be used for a way to replace text within a file or input. If you are looking for a more advanced solution for replacing text within Linux we also suggest using the sed command.

replace "computer" "hope" -- example.txt

Replace the word computer with the word hope in example.txt, overwriting the original file with the changes.