grepedit

Sometimes we grep for something in a bunch of files, and then we want to make edits to the lines that were returned from the grep. It's a hassle in most editors to open all the files and find all the lines. grepedit puts the match lines in a temp file for easy editing all at once.

The cmdline arguments to grepedit are the same as those to grep. Do not use arguments that alter the output line format; -C is ok.

grepedit also reads the following arguments:

--sort-text sort lines by the text part of the line (this probably doesn't make sense with -C)

Install

pip install grepedit

PyPI page

Download version 2.0 (2022-04-05) (py3 support- thanks Benjamin!)

Download version 1.0 (2005-10-09)

Screenshots

Run grepedit on itself and setup.py:

% grepedit the *

Edit the result lines in vi (according to $EDITOR):

grepedit:3:"""sometimes we grep for something in a bunch of files, and then we
grepedit:4:want to make edits to the lines that were returned from the grep. It's
grepedit:5:a hassle to edit all the files; this program puts the match lines in a
grepedit:8:EDITOR is used on the temporary file.
grepedit:10:The cmdline arguments to grepedit are the same as those to grep. Do
grepedit:11:not use arguments that alter the output line format; -C is ok.
grepedit:13:grepedit also reads the the following arguments:
grepedit:15:  --sort-text sort lines by the text part of the line (this probably
grepedit:100:                print "%s:%s has changed since the grep command ran- not modifying this line" % key
setup.py:6:      description="edit lines the result of a grep and modify the original files",
~
~
~
"/tmp/grepedit_IOLHsa" 10 lines, 792 characters

grepedit reports what changes it made:

% grepedit the *
no changes made in file setup.py
grepedit:13 substituting new line
%

Related

emacs occur-edit-mode, new in emacs24 (a short howto)

hide-lines.el similar thing, but for working on one buffer in emacs

all.el --- Edit all lines matching a given regexp (in emacs)