Figured it out myself. Because Powershell works with .net objects rather than text, you need to use get-content to expose the contents of the text files. So to perform what I was trying to do in the question, use:
compare-object (get-content one.txt) (get-content two.txt)
I'd use Python for this. Put all this code into a file called mass_replace and "chmod +x mass_replace
":
#!/usr/bin/python
import os
import re
import sys
def file_replace(fname, s_before, s_after):
out_fname = fname + ".tmp"
out = open(out_fname, "w")
for line in open(fname):
out.write(re.sub(s_before, s_after, line))
out.close()
os.rename(out_fname, fname)
def mass_replace(dir_name, s_before, s_after):
for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(dir_name):
for fname in filenames:
f = fname.lower()
# example: limit replace to .txt, .c, and .h files
if f.endswith(".txt") or f.endswith(".c") or f.endswith(".h"):
f = os.path.join(dirpath, fname)
file_replace(f, s_before, s_after)
if len(sys.argv) != 4:
u = "Usage: mass_replace <dir_name> <string_before> <string_after>\n"
sys.stderr.write(u)
sys.exit(1)
mass_replace(sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2], sys.argv[3])
For a single search and replace of one string in one type of file, the solution with find and sed isn't bad. But if you want to do a lot of processing in one pass, you can edit this program to extend it, and it will be easy (and likely to be correct the first time).
Best Answer
While PowerShell is certainly capable of this, have you considered using the UnxUtils Win32 ports?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils/