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unix find and replace recursively

Hopefully, this will be a quick one for someone here... I need to find and replace a string recursively in unix.

Normally, I use:

   perl -e "s/term/differenterm/g;" -pi $(find path/to/DIRECTORY -type f)

But, the string I need to replace contains slashes, and I'm not sure how to escape them?

So, I need to do:

    perl -e "s/FIND/REPLACE/g;" -pi $(find path/to/DIRECTORY -type f)

where FIND = '/string/path/term'
and REPLACE = '/string/path/newterm'

You can use

s###;

s#/string/path/term#/string/path/newterm#;

OR
s{/string/path/term}{/string/path/newterm};

ASKER

I tried both of those, but it returns "Illegal variable name".

perl -e "s#/string/path/term/#/string/path/newterm/#" -pi $(find ./* -type f )
Illegal variable name.

What exactly are you trying to do?

ASKER

"
So, I need to do:

perl -e "s/FIND/REPLACE/g;" -pi $(find path/to/DIRECTORY -type f)

where FIND = /string/path/term
and REPLACE = /string/path/newterm
"

perl -pi.bak -e 's/(\/string\/path\/)term/$1newterm/g;' $( find /path/to/directory -type f)
The -i option requires a suffix to a maintain a backup.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

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