Server side find/replace option?

Sorry in advance if this isn't where I should be posting this... not quite sure.

I'm working from an old school html site. I have to change meta descriptions on a couple of thousand pages and I'm wondering if there's anything on the server side I can do or use that would allow me to do some sort of find/replace. Like find the meta description and replace with a portion of the first sentence or two in the body of an article so I don't have to spend weeks doing this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Have you tried this?

Edit: I assumed you are on Linux server. If not, please ignore this.

 

if all are .html files..

replace "old" "new" -- *.html

do this at the directory level.


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joseph