Alter many files, all with same variable in them

I have 100's of files that access a field in a mySQL DataBase. I had to change the field name and now I have to update 100's of files. The files read:

$sql = 'SELECT user_id, username, user_colour, user_birthday FROM '

Code (markup):

I need it to now read:

$sql = 'SELECT id, nick, user_colour, user_birthday FROM '

Code (markup):

I know I could go through all files and execute a replace 'user_id' with 'id', but that would take forever. Does anyone know a program to do this easier?

 

Homesite has an extended replace function which will go through files and sub directories doing a search and replace.

 

Thanks for the tip, but do you know of an open source version, that won't set me back a couple of hundred bucks?

 

Doing a Google I found this: http://www.orbit.org/replace/

No idea what it is like but it is free!

I'll leave the rest of the Googling to you

 

Thanks
I appreciate the help!

 

Eclipse (eclipse.org) does search and replace across files. With PDT (based on Eclipse, eclipse.org/pdt ), you have an entire PHP development environment.

The biggest question is this, though: why are you changing 100s of instances of one line, to 100s of instances of another line, when in the future you're probably going to have to do the same?

You need to pull that string out into a variable at least... so that next time you need to change it you only have to change it in one spot.

 

Hey that sounds cool, how would I start to do that?

 

If you want to make the change from the unix command line, the program you need is 'sed'.

 

Here's a link to a couple of methods to do what you are asking:

kb.iu.edu/data/afrk.html

 

SWEET !!
Thanks