GIT-SED(1)

💅 GIT-SED(1) — the Git Extras era

okay bestie, sit down, because git-sed is about to become your new obsession ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

git-sed — swap out patterns inside files that git is tracking, no cap 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

git-sed [ -c ] [ -f flags ] search replacement [ flags ] [ -- pathspec ]

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so here's the vibe: it runs git grep, takes whatever it found, and hands those results straight to sed so your patterns get replaced — with the flags you gave it, if you gave it any (either through -f or as that third argument, iykyk).

and if you pass -c? it also runs git commit for you. main character behavior, honestly 👑

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -c — commits the changes that come out of this, using a standard commit message that spells out the exact command you ran. ⚠️ it will fail if there are unstaged changes, so tidy up first bestie.
• <flags> -f <flags> — uses these regex flags in the sed command. for example "g" replaces multiple times on the same line. (you can pass <flags> bare as the third argument too.)
• <search> — the pattern that gets passed to grep and to the first part of the sed expression.
• <replacement> — the replacement that gets passed to sed, aka the second part of the sed expression.
• -- <pathspec> — limits which paths this gets applied to. for the supported patterns of pathspec, go read <https://git-scm.com/docs/gitglossary.html#Documentation/gitglossary.txt-aiddefpathspecapathspec> 📖

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

$ git sed 'my_function' 'do_stuff'
# ... only does the changes, without committing
$ git commit -m"use proper function name"
$ git sed -c 'do_stuff' 'stuff'
# .. does the changes and a commit
$ git sed -f g do_stuff stuff
# .. g is actually pretty important, otherwise you will miss some
# stuff!
$ git sed 'my_method' 'do_stuff' -- lake/
# ... only replace 'my_method' occurs under lake/.

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

written by Antoine Beaupré <anarcat@debian.org>, who was inspired by <https://github.com/da-x/git-search-replace> and <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9651898/is-there-a-git-sed-or-equivalent> — absolute legends, fr fr 🙌

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😭 REPORTING BUGS 😭

found something cursed? scream into the void here: <https://github.com/tj/git-extras/issues>

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🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

• <https://github.com/tj/git-extras>

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and that's the whole page, angel 💜 this lil' masterpiece shipped in May 2026 as part of Git Extras — go forth and replace patterns responsibly, and remember: no -c without a clean working tree 🧚✨