OK I maintain a whole bunch of websites which are on a development server, and sometimes I want to open all the same files from the different websites all at once.

e.g.
/www/whorepresents/config/database.cfg
/www/penisisland/config/database.cfg
/www/therapistfinder/config/database.cfg
/www/expertsexchange/config/database.cfg
...
etc...
but there are dozens of sites

I want to open all the database.cfg files in my shitty editor, all at once, so I can do some 'replace all' magic - 2 seconds - and be done with it.


I can putty into the server, type a LOT, and edit stuff in VIM.. don't like doing that!
The server is mounted as a network drive on my windows 7, so I can click about and find the file I want in each site and drag it into an editor.... too hard.
I can use windows search to find all the files with the same name... too. god. damn. slow.


So who can think of a way I can do this easily? Ideally it would be like the windows search option where I get all the icons up.. and just drag them over to my editor and BAM, except a shitload faster. I don't know what takes windows search so long.. like an hour... maybe more.

I know windows search is slow but could you not do that as a once off, highlight all the files you want to edit, right click (and with Notepad++ or another tabbed editor installed), click Edit with Notepad++, it'll open all the selected files in their own tabs. Edit and save the files but not close the tabs. If you close the tabs, there's always the recent saved history as well to reopen things. I'm sure there's more efficient ways to accomplish this but might work in the meantime.

I have used this before, sometimes it was an easy change and this was fine, a lot of times the changes were too complicated to come up with that replace pattern reliably, and quite often I need to click through to several files where the change wasn't applied because of inconsistencies.

Well I supposed if you want you can do something like:
- create the find script on the server, drop the list into a file
- replace all the actual samba's path with your windows' samba path like \\foobar\shared\
- write a little batch script that does loops opens the above file, on your windows PC then just opens the file something like:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe" "%1%"

That'll then loads _all_ the files into your Notepad++ in multiple tabs.

Windows 7? PowerShell:

dir -recurse www\*\config\database.cfg | foreach { notepad $_ }

Basically like Jim's solution, but opens notepad for each file instead of replacement with sed.

or

dir -recurse www\*\config\database.cfg | select -expand FullName | "C:\Program Files\notepad++\notepad++.exe"

find out if the way to open multiple files in notepad++ is to pass them as multiple arguments, then build your argument list with the loop instead of running notepade++ in it

Wtf, notepad++ has a recursive find and replace function inbuilt... ctrl+f click the tab, specify a top path and voila

I guess i'll check it out, but ftr I find notepad++ find&replace functionality pretty pitiful, I had to get a plugin to replace it, which uses a separate thing to the one-liner shit you get at ctrl+f.
Plus find&replace isn't everything, these sites are a clusterfuck from a dozen different developers, so you wind up hitting maybe 2/3 of them via search and replace, then maybe another 5 sites with another find&replace, then the rest with another. It's good to have them all there to be able to switch through and see them all bang bang bang get it done.last edited by thermite at 21:19:29 29/Jun/12

Oh OK I understand where you're coming from now. Be glad you can leave all files open in notepad++