Batch replace strings in all files in a folder--when there are UNIX-style slashes

[tarahmarie]

So I have a directory full of m3u files (playlists, which are essentially XML files). I moved my main directory full of music, and now need to replace all the paths in all those files. I need to change

/home/tarahmarie/Music/

to

/data/Music/

The problem is that I'm not sure how to go about it, since there are slashes in that string, and the only way I've seen to do this via CL with perl is

find /path/to/start/from/ -type f | xargs perl -pi -e 's/applicationX/applicationY/g'

The problem is that I'd be doing this:

find /path/to/start/from/ -type f | xargs perl -pi -e 's/home/tarahmarie/data/g'

And I don't think that works, since I've got that extra slash in the string.

How might I modify this to work?

[t4thfavor]

lookup the syntax for sed and or awk, it should be very simple to setup a one liner to make this task happen.

[tarahmarie]

Right, but I'm trying to modify that perl script, since sed and awk are bloody complicated.

[StephenDavison]

Escape the directory separator with a back slash.

's/home\/tarahmarie/data/g'

Try that.

Edited to add:
Like t4thfavor, my first thought was to use sed (stream editor) to do this. It has the -i option to do in-place editing. For this purpose, sed is no more complicated than using perl. Here's something to get you started with sed. This should be what comes after xargs.

sed -i 's/home\/tarahmarie/data/g'

2nd edit:
I tested the above command and it works with a file argument -- should also work fine with xargs.

[t4thfavor]

Definately intimidating until you start to understand them. Then it's just plain scary because you begin to understand them...

sed 's/\\home\\oldpath\\/\\home\\newPath\\/g' test.txt>> test2.txt

[Arndt]

Definately intimidating until you start to understand them. Then it's just plain scary because you begin to understand them...

sed 's/\\home\\oldpath\\/\\home\\newPath\\/g' test.txt>> test2.txt

All of these support using a different separator than slash. Just use any one you want, like s#applicationX#applicationY#g

[tarahmarie]

All of these support using a different separator than slash. Just use any one you want, like s#applicationX#applicationY#g

Can I specify that I want them written back to the same filename?

[ziekfiguur]

Can I specify that I want them written back to the same filename?

If you use sed, the -i parameter makes it work in-place, so the changes will be made in the file instead of printed to the terminal.

[StephenDavison]

Have you read all the replies? I posted that 16 hours ago.

[tarahmarie]

Here's my output when I try that:

/data/Music/testplay Hello! $sed -i 's/\\home/tarahmarie/Music\\/\\data/Music\\/g'
sed: -e expression #1, char 22: unknown option to `s'