frep is a fast find-and-replace tool. Search and replace in files in a directory (including subdirectories), or process stdin.

# Instead of:
frep "before" "after"

# Use:
scooter -N -s "before" -r "after"

# Instead of:
frep --directory ./src/dir "before" "after"

# Use:
scooter -N -s "before" -r "after" ./src/dir

To replace text in files within the current directory:

frep "before" "after"

Or specify an alternative directory:

frep --directory ./src/dir "before" "after"

To process text from stdin:

$ echo "hello world" | frep "hello" "hi"
hi world

There are a number of command-line flags to change the behaviour of frep, such as:

• --fixed-strings (-f) to search without regex
• --advanced-regex (-a) to use advanced regex features such as negative lookahead (not enabled by default for improved performance)
• --include-files (-I) and --exclude-files (-E) to include or exclude files and directories using glob matching. For instance, -I "*.rs, *.py" matches all files with the .rs or .py extensions, and -E "env/**" excludes all files in the env directory
• --case-insensitive (-i) to ignore case when matching
• --match-whole-word (-w) to only match complete words

Run frep --help to see the full list of flags.

Note: When processing stdin, the --include-files, --exclude-files, and --hidden flags are not available as they are file-system specific.

frep is fast. Below is a benchmark for comparison, performing a find and replace across the entire Linux kernel repo, finding and replacing the string "before" with "after":

On macOS and Linux, you can install frep using Homebrew:

brew install thomasschafer/tap/frep

Download the appropriate binary for your system from the releases page:

After downloading, extract the binary and move it to a directory in your PATH.

Ensure you have cargo installed (see here), then run:

cargo install frep

Ensure you have cargo installed (see here), then run the following commands:

git clone git@github.com:thomasschafer/frep.git
cd frep
cargo install --path frep --locked