Python: Find/Replace Strings in Unicode Files

Xah Lee, 2004-03-09, …, 2013-05-06

This page shows Python scripts for doing find/replace on Unicode encoded files.

Here's how one'd do it for a file encoded with UTF-16.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# python

# find and replace many pairs of strings in sequence in a utf-16 file

filePath = "/Users/t/web/p/x/x001.html"

outFile = filePath + "~-~"

findreplace = [
(u"<title>西游记</title>", u"<title>西游记 (Monkey King)</title>"),

# more pair here
]

inF = open(filePath, "rb")
fContent = unicode(inF.read(), "utf-16")
inF.close()

for couple in findreplace:
    outText = fContent.replace(couple[0], couple[1])
    fContent = outText

outF = open(outFile, "wb")
outF.write(outText.encode("utf-16"))
outF.close()

UTF-8 Version

Here's a script that does multi-pair find ＆ replace for all HTML files in a dir, assuming the encoding is UTF-8.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# python

import os,sys,shutil

mydir= '/Users/t/web/p/xyz'

findreplace = [
('find1','replace1'),
('find2','replace2'),
]

def replaceStringInFile(filePath):
   "replaces all findStr by repStr in file filePath"
   print filePath
   tempName=filePath+'~x~'
   backupName=filePath+'~~'

   inF = open(filePath,'rb')
   s=unicode(inF.read(),'utf-8')
   inF.close()

   for couple in findreplace:
       outtext=s.replace(couple[0],couple[1])
       s=outtext
   outF = open(tempName,'wb')
   outF.write(outtext.encode('utf-8'))
   outF.close()

   shutil.copy2(filePath,backupName)
   os.remove(filePath)
   os.rename(tempName,filePath)

def myfun(dummy, thisDir, dirChildrenList):
    for child in dirChildrenList:
        if '.html' == os.path.splitext(child)[1] and os.path.isfile(thisDir+'/'+child):
            replaceStringInFile(thisDir+'/'+child)
            print child

os.path.walk(mydir, myfun, 'dummy')

See also: Perl: Find/Replace on Multiple Files.