CLI Tool - RPX an easy to use and intuitive string replacer

When I started programming in Ruby and Elixir some years ago I noticed that I’ve started using terminal more often (previously I worked with Java + Eclipse so terminal wasn’t so required).

Several times I wanted to perform a simple task: search and replace occurencies in all source code. Firstly I tried and managed to use sed to this task.

sed -i 's/SEARCH_REGEX/REPLACEMENT/g' INPUTFILE

Even sed working well I missed some features like:

• List only git managed files.
• See a list of all occurrencies before replacing.
• Be able to choose which occurrencies would be replaced.

So I decided to create a command line tool with these features.

RPX

Rpx github.com/andrewaguiar/rpx usage is pretty simple, just type rpx <term> <replacement> and it will present all occurencies of all git managed files git ls-files.

You can then choose which occurencies you would like to replace by typing ids, ranges or even (a)ll.

Installation

Just download the binary in bin/rpx and add it to the path

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/andrewaguiar/rpx/master/bin/rpx
chmod +x rpx

Or clone the project and make the binary

git clone git@github.com:andrewaguiar/rpx.git
cd rpx
mix escript.build

Then add it to PATH

export PATH="$PATH:rpx_location"

Usage

Type rpx to see instructions.

NAME
       rpx -- simple and powerfull string replacer

SYNOPSIS
       rpx <string-to-be-replaced> <replacement> [base-path] [-xar]

DESCRIPTION

       Rpx scans all allowed files recursively and shows all occurences of <string-to-be-replaced> in each file, then it
       asks for confirmation before replace all occurrences by <replacement>.

       The following options are available:

       --regex | -r
              Treats the <string-to-be-replaced> as a regex instead of a simple text (default false).

Creating a bin

run ./make_dist and the binary will be generated in ./bin.