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I need to comment out all lines containing "dlclose" for each file in the current directory and any sub-directories (recursively). This is my best guess so far given what I was able to find out from various guides.

grep -lIR "dlclose" . | grep -v ".svn" | sed -i 's/.*dlclose.*/\/\/&/g'

The two greps successfully find all files I want changed, but sed claims an unterminated s command.

user50914
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  • Use a different delimiter with `sed` and you won't need to escape the slashes. That will make it easier to read. `sed 's|.*dlclose.*|//&|g'` – Dennis Williamson Aug 12 '10 at 03:48

1 Answers1

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You are attempting to edit in place (-i option) the STDIN.

Remove -i option, it is useless.

Note:

You can speed up the command a lot avoiding the second grep, excluding at the root the unnecessary directories

Try 

grep -lIR --exclude-dir=.svn "dlclose" . | xargs sed -i bak 's/.*dlclose.*/\/\/&/g'

or

for f in $(grep -lIR --exclude-dir=.svn "dlclose" .)
do
   sed -i bak 's/.*dlclose.*/\/\/&/g' $f
done
drAlberT
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