RPL(1)

💖 RPL(1) — the girlies' guide to search-and-replace 💖

okay so bestie, listen. rpl is a User Commands girlie and she does exactly one thing but she does it so well: she searches and replaces text in files. that's her whole personality and honestly? iconic.

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✨ NAME ✨

rpl — search and replace text in files 🎀

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

rpl [OPTION...] OLD-TEXT NEW-TEXT [FILE...]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

bestie. the whole gig is: search and replace text in files. that's it, that's the vibe.

Text that matches the pattern OLD-TEXT gets swapped out for NEW-TEXT in each FILE. and the tea is: the pattern can match multiple lines, so don't even worry about it being a one-line-only situation. she's flexible. 💅

• -h, --help — prints the help and dips. that's it. bye 👋
• --full-help — prints the help but with the hidden options included too. secret menu energy, lowkey obsessed 🫶
• -V, --version — prints the version and exits. short and sweet ✨

okay so about that pattern — OLD-TEXT matches at most once in each position, even when it matches the empty string. like, she's not out here double-dipping at the same spot. one match per position, periodt.

• --encoding=ENCODING — specify the character set encoding. tell her what alphabet the vibe is in 💜
• -w, --whole-words — whole words only (OLD-TEXT only matches on word boundaries) (default=off). partial matches? not today, bestie 🚫
• -b, --backup — renames the original FILE to FILE~ before doing the replacing (default=off). little safety net moment, we love a girl who plans ahead 🎀
• -q, --quiet — quiet mode (default=off). she's giving mysterious, silent, unbothered 🤫
• -v, --verbose — verbose mode (default=off). she's giving tell-me-EVERYTHING main character energy 📣
• -s, --dry-run — simulation mode (default=off). she acts like she's doing it but changes nothing. rehearsal era 🎭
• -F, --fixed-strings — treats OLD-TEXT and NEW-TEXT as fixed strings, not regular expressions (default=off). no regex drama, just literal vibes 💀
• --dotall — lets dot (period) match any character, including newlines (default=off). the dot said "no limits" 🌈
• --files — OLD-TEXT and NEW-TEXT are file names to read the patterns from (default=off). patterns from a file, fancy ✨
• -x, --glob=GLOB — only modifies files matching the given glob (you can give this more than once) (default=*). picky about her circle, and honestly? valid 🌸
• -R, --recursive — searches recursively (default=off). she goes deep, no cap 🕳️
• -p, --prompt — prompts you before modifying each file (default=off). always asks for consent, queen 👑
• -f, --force — ignore errors when trying to preserve attributes (default=off). mistakes? never heard of her 💅
• -d, --keep-times — keeps the modification times on modified files (default=off). preserving the timeline, respect 🕰️
• -i, --ignore-case — searches case-insensitively. FUNNY, funny, FuNnY — all the same to her 🙈
• -m, --match-case — ignores case when searching, but tries to match the case of the replacement to the case of the original, whether that's capitalized, all upper-case, or mixed. she's doing the mental math and she's right every time 🧠✨

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🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

imagine wanting to replace every single occurrence of the word funny with annoying in all files with the .txt extension under the reports/ directory. the way she'd do it:

rpl --glob '*.txt' -R -w funny annoying reports

boom. slay. done. 🔥

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Written by Göran Weinholt and Reuben Thomas. two legends, one tool, we stan 🫶

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright © 2025-2026 Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>

Licence GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

bestie the "NO WARRANTY" is in ALL CAPS for a reason okay, take it seriously 😭

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

find(1), sed(1) — her cousins, her sisters, her girls 💖

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and that's the whole page, babes ✨ this was rpl version 2.1.0, dated July 2026 — drop a 💅 for the devs, they ate fr fr 🎀💖🦋