search replace word

This software search a character, a word or a complex pattern and replace it by another character or another string in text files.

In most situations, the search/replace provided with word processors or spreadsheet software gives good results. But there are 4 cases where you will prefer this tool :

1- You can perform the same search/replace on an unlimited number of files

2- You have a lot of replacements to do. For example, it can take half an hour or more to Excel to change the decimal separator of 10 000 000 numbers, whereas this tool will do that in 1 or 2 seconds.

3- You want to use large regular expressions or easily create a list by replacing spaces (\s) or tabulations (\t) with newlines (\n).

4- The iterative replacement feature allows to replace consecutive cells in a table for example.

Manual :

1- if not already installed, install Perl free programming language

2- unzip the software

3- copy data text files in the “data” directory

4- execute the software by the command : perl software_name or double click on the .pl file

enter the search pattern and press enter

enter the replace string and press enter

if needed enter the number of iterative replacement (if unsure just press enter)

5- processed files are in the “results” directory.

This software uses regular expression in the search pattern

. Match any character (except newline)

* Match 0 or more times

+ Match 1 or more times

? Match 1 or 0 times

\ Quote the next metacharacter

\t tab (HT, TAB)

\n newline (LF, NL)

\s space

\r return

\. dot

For more information about regular expressions, visit :

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html

http://perl.enstimac.fr/DocFr/perlre.html (French)

Examples :

1- Replace string1 by string2

replace: string1

with: string2

2- Replace a space by a newline

replace: \s

with: \n

3- Replace a comma by a dot

replace: ,

with: .

4- Replace a dot by a comma

replace: \.

with: ,

5- Replace Jule (but also Jale, Jile, Jole etc...) by Bob

replace: J.le

with: Bob

6- Replace all columns containing 1 by columns containing 0 in a table.

replace: \t1\t

with : 0 (TAB 0 TAB)

iteration : 2 (iterations should be >1 to enable replacements to be done in consecutive columns)