Replace strings in files by Python

Question

How can you replace the match with the given replacement recursively in a given directory and its subdirectories?

Pseudo-code

impo         


        

Answer 1

This is how I would find and replace strings in files using python. This is a simple little function that will recursively search a directories for a string and replace it with a string. You can also limit files with a certain file extension like the example below.

import os, fnmatch
def findReplace(directory, find, replace, filePattern):
    for path, dirs, files in os.walk(os.path.abspath(directory)):
        for filename in fnmatch.filter(files, filePattern):
            filepath = os.path.join(path, filename)
            with open(filepath) as f:
                s = f.read()
            s = s.replace(find, replace)
            with open(filepath, "w") as f:
                f.write(s)

This allows you to do something like:

findReplace("some_dir", "find this", "replace with this", "*.txt")