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PHP - How to replace a string in a very large number of files?

I have two million text files on a server that is accessible to internet users. I was asked to make changes (line replace operation) to these files as soon as possible. I was thinking about creating str_replace

for every text file on the server. However, I don't want to bind the server and make it inaccessible to Internet users.

Do you think this is a good idea?

<?php

ini_set('max_execution_time', 1000);


$path=realpath('/dir/');
$objects = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($path), RecursiveIteratorIterator::SELF_FIRST);
foreach($objects as $name => $object){
   set_time_limit(100);
  //do str_replace stuff on the file
}
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3 answers


Use find , xargs and sed from shell

, that is:

cd /dir

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i 's/OLD/NEW/g

Will search all the files recursively (hidden as well) within the current dir

and replace OLD

on NEW

using sed

.

Why -print0

?

From man find :



If you are piping the search output into another program and there is a very slight chance that the files you are looking for may contain a newline, then you should seriously consider using the '-print0' option instead of '-print'.

Why xargs

?

From man find :



The specified command runs once for each associated file.

That is, if /dir

there are 2000 files, it find ... -exec ...

will result in 2000 calls sed

; whereas it find ... | xargs ...

will only call sed

once or twice.

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Don't do this with PHP, it will most likely fail and I'll take over all your system resources.

find . -type f -exec sed -i 's/search/replace/g' {} +


Example above with string search and replace, as well as recursive and regular files, including hidden ones.

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You can also do this with a Python program limited to one core (the default). If your machine has multiple cores, and at least one is usually free, you should have it installed.

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