Best way to do a find/replace in several files?

Question

what\'s the best way to do this? I\'m no command line warrior, but I was thinking there\'s possibly a way of using grep and cat.

I just want to

Answer 1

comment() { 
}
doc() { 
}
function agr { 
doc 'usage: from=sth to=another agr [ag-args]'
comment -l --files-with-matches

ag -0 -l "$from" "${@}" | pre-files "$from" "$to"
}
pre-files() {
doc 'stdin should be null-separated list of files that need replacement; $1 the string to replace, $2 the replacement.'
comment '-i backs up original input files with the supplied extension (leave empty for no backup; needed for in-place replacement.)(do not put whitespace between -i and its arg.)'
comment '-r, --no-run-if-empty
              If  the  standard input does not contain any nonblanks,
              do not run the command.  Normally, the command  is  run
              once  even  if there is no input.  This option is a GNU
              extension.'

AGR_FROM="$1" AGR_TO="$2" xargs -r0 perl -pi.pbak -e 's/$ENV{AGR_FROM}/$ENV{AGR_TO}/g'
}

You can use it like this:

from=str1 to=sth agr path1 path2 ...

Supply no paths to make it use the current directory. Note that ag, xargs, and perl need to be installed and on PATH.