Editing files in place with sed

If you want to edit a bunch of files – for dns updates on bind for example, do this:

sed –i s/<text to replace>/<text to replace with>/g filename_to_change


If you’re concerned about backups, then you can do this:

sed –i’<orginal backup file extension>’ s/<text to replace>/<replacement text>/g filename_to_change

e.g. if we want to edit a file and keep the original with a .old extension the following would work

sed –i’.old’ s/<text to replace>/<replacement text>/g filename_to_change


Notice the single quotes after the ‘i’. This will produce a file with an extension of .old as a backup.

Tags: backup, bind, dns, edit, in, place, sed