Find and replace in shell scripting

Question

Is it possible to search in a file using shell and then replace a value? When I install a service I would like to be able to search out a variable in a config file and then repl

Answer 1

You can use sed to do this:

sed -i 's/toreplace/yoursetting/' configfile 

sed is probably available on every unix like system out there. If you want to replace more than one occurence you can add a g to the s-command:

sed -i 's/toreplace/yoursetting/g' configfile 

Be careful since this can completely destroy your configfile if you don't specify your toreplace-value correctly. sed also supports regular expressions in searching and replacing.