rpl 1.18

Replace strings in files

rpl

https://github.com/rrthomas/rpl
© 2025 Reuben Thomas [e-mail]

A search/replace utility.

rpl replaces strings with new strings in multiple text files. See the man page rpl(1) for more information. Install rpl using pip install rpl.

rpl is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option), any later version. See the file COPYING for more details.

See rpl --version for a full list of copyright holders.

usage: rpl [-h] [--version] [--encoding ENCODING] [-i] [-m] [-w] [-b] [-q]
           [-v] [-s] [-e] [-F] [--files] [-x GLOB] [-R] [-p] [-f] [-d]
           OLD-TEXT NEW-TEXT [FILE ...]

Search and replace text in files.

positional arguments:
  OLD-TEXT
  NEW-TEXT
  FILE                  `-' or no FILE argument means standard input

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  --encoding ENCODING   specify character set encoding
  -i, --ignore-case     search case-insensitively
  -m, --match-case      ignore case when searching, but try to match case of
                        replacement to case of original, either capitalized,
                        all upper-case, or mixed
  -w, --whole-words     whole words (OLD-TEXT matches on word boundaries only)
  -b, --backup          rename original FILE to FILE~ before replacing
  -q, --quiet           quiet mode
  -v, --verbose         verbose mode
  -s, --dry-run         simulation mode
  -e, --escape          expand escapes in OLD-TEXT and NEW-TEXT [deprecated]
  -F, --fixed-strings   treat OLD-TEXT and NEW-TEXT as fixed strings, not
                        regular expressions
  --files               OLD-TEXT and NEW-TEXT are file names to read patterns
                        from
  -x GLOB, --glob GLOB  modify only files matching the given glob (may be
                        given more than once)
  -R, --recursive       search recursively
  -p, --prompt          prompt before modifying each file
  -f, --force           ignore errors when trying to preserve attributes
  -d, --keep-times      keep the modification times on modified files