Search and Replace Specific Terms

Create a batch change that changes specific words in every repository.

This example shows you how to create a batch spec that replaces the words whitelist and blacklist with allowlist and denylist in every Markdown file across your entire code base.

The batch spec can be easily changed to search and replace other terms in other file types.

use_allowlist_denylist_wording_teaser

Prerequisites

It's recommended to use the latest version of Sourcegraph when working with Batch Changes.

Before you start, it's better to read the following docs:

Create the batch spec

Save the following batch spec YAML as allowlist-denylist.batch.yaml:

YAML
name: use-allowlist-denylist-wording
description: This batch change updates our Markdown docs to use the terms "allowlist" and "denylist" instead of "whitelist" and "blacklist".
 
# Search for repositories in which the term "whitelist" or "blacklist" appears
# in Markdown files.
on:
  - repositoriesMatchingQuery: whitelist OR blacklist lang:markdown -file:vendor -file:node_modules
 
# In each repository
steps:
  # find all * or *.markdown files, that are not in a vendor or node_modules
  # folder, and replace the terms in them:
  - run: |
      find . -type f \( -name '*' -or -name '*.markdown' \) -not -path "*/vendor/*" -not -path "*/node_modules/*" |\
      xargs sed -i 's/whitelist/allowlist/g; s/blacklist/denylist/g'
    container: alpine:3
 
# Describe the changeset (e.g., GitHub pull request) you want for each repository.
changesetTemplate:
  title: Replace whitelist/blacklist with allowlist/denylist
  body: This replaces the terms whitelist/blacklist in Markdown files with allowlist/denylist
  branch: batch-changes/allowlist-denylist # Push the commit to this branch.
  commit:
    message: Replace whitelist/blacklist with allowlist/denylist
  published: false

Create the batch change

In your terminal, run the following command:

SHELL
src batch preview -f use-allowlist-denylist-wording.batch.yaml

Wait for it to run and compute the changes for each repository

use_allowlist_denylist_wording_wait_run

Open the preview URL that the command printed out

use_allowlist_denylist_wording_click_url

Examine the preview. Confirm that the changes are what you intended. If not, edit your batch spec and then re-run the command above

use_allowlist_denylist_wording_preview

Click the Apply button to create the batch change
Feel free to then publish the changesets (i.e., create pull requests and merge requests) by modifying the published attribute in the batch spec and re-running the src batch preview command

Using `ruplacer` to replace terms in multiple case styles

With ruplacer we can easily search and replace terms in multiple case styles: white_list, WhiteList, WHITE_LIST etc.

The easiest way to use ruplacer in our batch spec would look like this:

YAML
steps:
  - run: |
      find . -type f \( -name '*' -or -name '*.markdown' \) -not -path "*/vendor/*" -not -path "*/node_modules/*" >> /tmp/find_result.txt \
      && cat /tmp/find_result.txt | while read file;
      do
        ruplacer --subvert whitelist allowlist --go ${file} || echo "nothing to replace";
        ruplacer --subvert blacklist denylist --go ${file} || echo "nothing to replace";
      done
    container: keegancsmith/ruplacer

Save the file and run the src batch preview command from above again to use ruplacer to replace variations of terms. Alternatively if you want to run it on all files:

YAML
steps:
  - run: |
      ruplacer --subvert whitelist allowlist --go || echo "nothing to replace"
      ruplacer --subvert blacklist denylist --go  || echo "nothing to replace"
    container: keegancsmith/ruplacer

Search and Replace Specific Terms

Prerequisites

Create the batch spec

Create the batch change

Using ruplacer to replace terms in multiple case styles

Using `ruplacer` to replace terms in multiple case styles