How to replace an expression in several TeX files?

Question

Can I replace all instances of one string expressions in the TeX files in one directory?

For example, let's say I want to replace all \frac with \myfrac in more than one file simultaneously.

Answer 1

Which operating system are you using? If you're using a *nix based operating system (Mac included), it's probably easiest to do this out of TeX, in the command line / terminal:

find /home/my/directory -type f -exec sed -i 's/OldString/NewString/g' {} \;

(using a combination of find and sed.)

So you'd need:

find /home/my/directory -type f -exec sed -i 's/frac/myfrac/g' {} \;

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

If you use Vim, you can try the following: First open one of your .tex files in vim.

Load the other .tex files from the same directory by opening them in hidden buffers:

:args *.tex

Now all the *.tex files in the directory are loaded into (hidden) buffers. You can apply a standard substitution command to each of these files by issuing the following command:

:argdo %s/string1/string2/g | update

The % is the range (entire file), s denotes the substitution command, string1 is found and replaced by string2 on each line, and g indicates that this is done globally (so not just the first instance on each line). The last part | update will automatically save all the files after the substitution is complete.

Because the backslash is a "special" character, you need to escape it with another backslash. In your case, you would issue the command:

:argdo %s/\\frac/\\myfrac/g | update

Answer 3

Most advanced text editors have a replace feature that can apply to a whole set of files at once.

For example, Notepad++ on Windows provides this feature. As mentionned in another response to this question, if you are using a *nix-based system, you could quite easily use the command line.