Search and replace with zsh

zsh modifiers allow you to do a great deal with variables, without having to resort to external commands or functions.

But the syntax is pretty esoteric and hard to guess. I randomly stumble upon it when reading other people code. And then I forgot about it.

This serie of articles about zsh is my way of documenting what I learn, so I can later refer it.

We'll see how to replace part of a string with something else. The basic syntax is to use the ${variableName:gs/XXX/YYY/} syntax.

• :gs/XXX/YYY/ is the basic syntax for search and replace
• XXX should be the string you want to replace
• YYY should be the string you want to replace it with
• s instead of gs replaces the first match, and not all matches
• To actually replace the / symbol you can change the delimiter by anything else, as long as you use the same in the three places. So ${variableName:gs_/_#_} will replace all / with #.

I haven't found a way to make the replacement dynamic, though (where XXX is actually coming from $anotherVariable).

Tags : #zsh

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