To search and replace text in multiple files from the Linux command line, you can use a combination of the find, grep, sed, and xargs commands. Here’s how you can do it:

Using find and sed with xargs

find /path/to/directory -type f -name "*.txt" -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i 's/oldtext/newtext/g'
    

Explanation:

• find /path/to/directory -type f -name "*.txt": Finds all files ending with .txt in the specified directory and its subdirectories.
• -print0: Prints the full file name on the standard output, followed by a null character (to handle filenames with spaces or special characters).
• xargs -0: Reads items from the standard input, separated by null characters.
• sed -i 's/oldtext/newtext/g': Uses sed to replace oldtext with newtext in each file (-i makes the change in-place).

Using grep to Find and sed to Replace

grep -rl 'oldtext' /path/to/directory | xargs sed -i 's/oldtext/newtext/g'
    

Explanation:

• grep -rl 'oldtext' /path/to/directory: Recursively searches for files containing oldtext.
• xargs sed -i 's/oldtext/newtext/g': Uses sed to replace oldtext with newtext in each found file.