Replace all occurrences of one string with another string in all child directories matching specific file types. Useful for normalizing Magento's copyright changes to get code-only diffs between releases.

recursive-text-replace.sh

############################
# Basic usage
############################

cd path/to/project


# One file type:
# Replace "red rover" with "black dog" in PHP files

find . -name '*.php' -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i '' 's/red rover/black dog/g'


# Multiple file types:
# Replace "red rover" with "black dog" in PHP or XML or PHTML files

find . -name '*.php' -print0 -o -name '*.phtml' -print0 -o -name '*.xml' -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i '' 's/red rover/black dog/g'


############################
# Magento usage
############################

# Optimized for scanning Magento.
# Using "*.ext*" to catch files named like "xyz.php.sample".
# Checks file types:
#
# *.css*
# *.html*
# *.js*
# *.php*
# *.phtml*
# *.xml*

find . -name '*.css*' -print0 -o -name '*.html*' -print0 -o -name '*.js*' -print0 -o -name '*.php*' -print0 -o -name '*.phtml*' -print0 -o -name '*.xml*' -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i '' 's/(c) 2013 Magento/(c) 2012 Magento/g'


# If there is error output:
# sed: RE error: illegal byte sequence
#
# Then add arguments to xargs to show which files have issues.
# Warning: this will leave dot-file copies of the files that sed can't process.
# Usually the cause is UTF-8 chars (like accented letters) being used in comments.
#
# See: https://gist.github.com/kalenjordan/6766591#comment-942244

find . -name '*.css*' -print0 -o -name '*.html*' -print0 -o -name '*.js*' -print0 -o -name '*.php*' -print0 -o -name '*.phtml*' -print0 -o -name '*.xml*' -print0 | xargs -t -n 1 -0 sed -i '' 's/(c) 2013 Magento/(c) 2012 Magento/g'

See progression:
https://gist.github.com/kalenjordan/6766591
https://twitter.com/falkowski/status/396450467150307328
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19733911/replace-string-with-spaces-recursively-using-sed-on-mac

The extra '' in sed -i '' 's/(c) 2013 Magento/(c) 2012 Magento/g' broke this for me - once I removed those quotes it worked. Thanks!