---
title: "emacs replace across multiple files"
seo_description: "emacs tutorial on how to replace / edit across multiple files"
date: 2021-11-28T18:49:21+01:00
draft: false
snippet_types:
- emacs
---

This week I was making some changes to a [hugo shortcode](https://gohugo.io/content-management/shortcodes/) I use on my personal
site for videos.

Old one:

```
{< video-with-caption
    remote_url="https://travisshears.com/image-service/videos/galtenberg-ski-tour/over_the_tree.webm"
    backup_url="https://travisshears.com/image-service/videos/galtenberg-ski-tour/over_the_tree.mp4"
    title="through the woods we go"
>}
```

New one:

```
{< video-with-caption
    webm_url="https://travisshears.com/image-service/videos/galtenberg-ski-tour/over_the_tree.webm"
    mp4_url="https://travisshears.com/image-service/videos/galtenberg-ski-tour/over_the_tree.mp4"
    title="through the woods we go"
>}
```

Problem is this change crosses 50+ files. I knew some ways with sed to regex
substitute it across the files but I wanted something more emacs. Eventually
found  [wgrep](https://github.com/emacsmirror/wgrep)! Its allows you to search
with normal `+default/search-project` then edit the results.

- \<SPC s p> to search the project
- type search ex: "remote_url"
- \<C-c C-o> to open the results
- delete some results with \<d>
- \<C-c C-p> to make the results editable
- make edits example :%s/remote_url/webm_url/g
- \<Z Z> to save changes across all the files
- lastly review changes via git

{{< video-with-caption
    webm_url="https://travisshears.com/image-service/videos/emacs-replace-across-multiple-files/emacs_mass_edit_small.webm"
    mp4_url="https://travisshears.com/image-service/videos/emacs-replace-across-multiple-files/emacs_mass_edit_small.mp4"
>}}

final patch: https://git.sr.ht/~travisshears/travisshears.com/commit/71e9c89c32f9b9f362e8e94ca8530530c1418284

---

In the making of this snippet I had some other fun:

- this screen recording led me to finding
  [keycastr](https://github.com/keycastr/keycastr).
  A very helpful mac osx program that displays keys as you type them.
  Great for tutorials.
- My personal site is not open source because I write lot of drafts that don't
  get published for months... For this snippet I wanted to show part of that
  source code as a patch, decided on hosting it as a sourcehut paste. To create
  the paste I wrote a [sourcehut-paste](https://git.sr.ht/~travisshears/sourcehut-paste).
- Video was created with Quicktime screen recording feature plus my video
  helper app, [ts-video](https://git.sr.ht/~travisshears/ts-video)