One and for all, let’s do this again.. how do you do the find and replace function of the Vi editor? I keep on coming back to Google for the syntax but at least I know that there is an ‘s’ in the beginning of the command and a ‘g’ at the end (for Global search). 🙂

Anyway, a little background before i copy paste the information here. I first taught myself how to use Vi during my ‘first’ job as a systems engineer in NEC TNCSi. Actually, my UNix foundation was all from NEC. Not that they train me how to be a unix admin, but I learned and taught myself how to do it. I read books that were lying around there and build samba servers, qmail and email servers and stuff until I got the ropes, the ins and outs of the UNix environment (Actually, I was using Linux – Redhat).

How Do You Find and Replace Text in Vi?

To perform a global search and replace in vi, use the search and replace command in command mode:

:%s/search_string/replacement_string/g

The % is a shortcut that tells vi to search all lines of the file for search_string and change it to replacement_string. The global ( g ) flag at the end of the command tells vi to continue searching for other occurrences of search_string . To confirm each replacement, add the confirm ( c ) flag after the global flag.

For this latest usage, i need to change the shell for all the users who are using /bin/ksh to a safeword sid shell.

remember to use the ‘slash’ character if you are filtering actually backslash.. You do not want to misinterpret the ‘/’ character by vi.

so, that’s

:%s/\/bin\/ksh/\/bin\/sid/g