02-09-2007, 06:25 AM

Hi

As per the title really... I need to go through a few hundred html files and get rid of a line out of the header.

I was going to sit down and do this manually, but I thought I'd rather have a tool do it for me (after all, this is what computers are for, aren't they?)...

I just need something that can work through a directory full of .htm files and do a find and replace (replacing the line with nothing).

Any free tools available?

Anything included in the OS that can do this?

Your help would be most appreciated

Thanks in advance!

02-09-2007, 08:52 AM

My suggestion would be to try Automater in your Applications directory (assuming that it works with whatever application you use to edit HTML).

02-09-2007, 09:53 AM

Apple has at least two pages that might be of help. This one is a step-by-step video of creating an Automator script to batch-change file names.

This page, without video, explains it, as well.

If Zoom is turned on in the Universal Access control panel/preferences, you can enlarge the video then shrink it by holding down the Control key and sliding the mouse wheel up and down (or use the keyboard).

If part of the image enlarges off the screen, drag the mouse from screen edge to screen edge to centre it. You can choose one of the three mouse-dragging actions you might prefer by clicking on the Zoom's Options button. The choices are at the bottom.

02-09-2007, 04:50 PM

I ended up getting a guy at work to write me a VB app to do this... he did it in about 15 minutes and it re-wrote over 100 files in 2 seconds

Shame I had to run it on a PC

(BTW, it wasn't renaming files, it was finding a line of code within a file, then replacing it with some different text).

Thanks anyway

02-09-2007, 05:25 PM

If you are familiar with the Terminal.App, you need just a single command for that

1)Open Terminal.App (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)

2)cd to the directory where you have all the html files (eg. cd ~/Sites/Mywebsite/)

3)type find -type f | xargs perl -pi -e 's/<String you want to replace>/<String you want to be replaced with>/g' and hit enter. (eg. find /Users/novicew/newsite/ -type f | xargs perl -pi -e 's/blablabla/blabla/g')

You can also define the specific file type you want the system to search as follows.
find /Users/novicew/newsite/ -type f | xargs perl -pi -e 's/blablabla/blabla/g' *.html

Possibilities are endless, you just need to find them

02-09-2007, 06:07 PM

The easy way....

Open TextWrangler (It's free. Google it. If you're editing HTML, you should have it anyway.)
Choose Search > Find
Enter the text you want to search for in the top field
Enter the replacement text in the second field
Check the Multi-File Search checkbox at the bottom of the window.
Click the Other... button. A file-chooser dialog will open.
Choose the folder that all of these files are in
Click Replace All
In the next dialog box, Decide whether you'd like the modified files to be opened (so you can review and save them individually) or saved as soon as the changes are made. Then click Proceed.

And you're done.

02-10-2007, 03:21 AM

Thanks Novicew and Technologist... Both fantastic replies that answer my question.