Find and replace many occurrences of a file with a new file.

Are all config.xml files the same?
An option is to get a diff between the old and the new, and then use patch to apply the difference/fix ...



You could use find
date=$(date +"%Y%m%b")
location='/path/to/config.xml'
find /path -name "config.xml'
You could use the suggestion David provider to backup the current file before updating it with the new one.
..

arnold's suggestion is safer.

Maybe even go so far as to rename the original file to config.xml.save.$date to keep a backup copy.

here is the full code,

#!/bin/bash

marker=$(date +"%Y%m%d")
Location_of_new_file='/path/to/new/file/config.xml'
location_of_search="/path/to/base/of/search"
find  $location_of_search -name "config.xml" | while read file_name; do
echo "Found $file_name:"
file_copy="$(dirname $file_name)/$marker-config.xml"
mv "$file_name" "$file_copy"
echo "Created $file_copy"
/bin/cp -f $Location_of_new_file $file_name
chmod 644 $file_name #set permissions
chown user:group $file_name #set ownership

done

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If it really is the case that all config.xml files are the same, might you like to  consider making them all symbolic links to the master?
In the above scripts, replace cp -a or cp -f with ln -sf.
You would get the benefit of at least 3 advantages of using symbolic links:

1. Only one file to update next time
2. Only need permissions of master to be right
3. Only need group / owner of master to be right

To be really sure of not clobbering anything: as you walk through the tree, diff each file against a copy of the original. Only if the 2 match, replace the target file with a symbolic link to the new master.
Will post an attempt at a script next

I have tested this with sub-directories a, b & c where b had a different file. After correcting, a re-run finished the job

#!/bin/sh
#set -x # Un-comment to debug
# Run this script *before* changing config.xml
# (or put the old one back temporarily)

# This script exits if it finds a config.xml which differs from the master.
# If that happens, correct the problem and re-run the script.
# If you do need the config.xml to be different,
# rename it temporarily so it is not found by this script again:
# be sure to rename it back afterwards.

set -e # Stop on any error

cd A # Replace A with your actual path

# "-type f" in the find command below stops you finding symlinks
# (e.g. created in previous runs of this script)
# -mindepth 2 stops you finding ./config.xml
find . -mindepth 2 -type f -name config.xml | while read F; do
  #echo "Processing $F" # Un-comment for verbode output
  diff $F . || { echo "diffs detected in $F: stopping" >&2; exit 1; }
  /bin/rm -f $F # /bin/rm to defeat any rm shennanagins in the environment
  /bin/ln -s $PWD/config.xml $F
done

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This script creates symbolic links as absolute paths
This script will not work if any of your directory names have spaces in them (fails doing while read).