---
name: "replace"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "mariadb"
version: "13.0.2-2"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/replace"
---

# replace(1)

a string-replacement utility

## NAME

replace - a string-replacement utility

## SYNOPSIS

**replace** *arguments*

## DESCRIPTION

The **replace** utility program changes strings in place in files or on the standard input.

Invoke **replace** in one of the following ways:

```
shell> replace from to [from to] ... -- file_name [file_name] ...
shell> replace from to [from to] ... < file_name
```

*from* represents a string to look for and *to* represents its replacement. There can be one or more pairs of strings.

Use the **--** option to indicate where the string-replacement list ends and the file names begin. In this case, any file named on the command line is modified in place, so you may want to make a copy of the original before converting it. *replace* prints a message indicating which of the input files it actually modifies.

If the **--** option is not given, **replace** reads the standard input and writes to the standard output.

**replace** uses a finite state machine to match longer strings first. It can be used to swap strings. For example, the following command swaps a and b in the given files, file1 and file2:

```
shell> replace a b b a -- file1 file2 ...
```

The **replace** program is used by **msql2mysql**. See [**msql2mysql**(1)](/msql2mysql/1.md).

**replace** supports the following options.

• **-?**, **-I**

Display a help message and exit.

• **-#***debug\_options*

Enable debugging.

• **-s**

Silent mode. Print less information what the program does.

• **-v**

Verbose mode. Print more information about what the program does.

• **-V**

Display version information and exit.

## COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2007-2008 MySQL AB, 2008-2010 Sun Microsystems, Inc., 2010-2025 MariaDB Foundation

This documentation is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it only under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.

This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with the program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1335 USA or see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

## SEE ALSO

For more information, please refer to the MariaDB Documentation, available online at https://mariadb.com/docs/

## AUTHOR

MariaDB Foundation (http://www.mariadb.org/).