search for a string through multiple php documents
 

Howdy, can anyone tell me how to search for a string through multiple php documents?

For example I see text I'd like to change in osCommerce but I can't seem to find it.

Also, is there an easier way to see the structure of all the nested phps besides reading through each one and finding all the includes?

Do you need to create a script or are you looking for a tool? I use a program called agent ransack for mass searches, it's extremely fast.

I always use notepad++ for this purpose. Go to search, then find in files.
It has three modes of search:
normal - just a normal search
extended (\n,\r,\t ...) - use special charcters such as line break, tab space .. etc.
Regular expression - use regular expression to find what you are looking for.

Program website:
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Thanks but i'm on a Mac.

TexFinderX seems to work.
http://sw.ixoft.com/texfinder.html

Dreamweaver is pretty cheap and *extremely* powerful. Komodo or Netbeans are free, but since I don't work on a Mac I can't attest to their features.

if you have shell access you could always use

grep -rl "text to find"

that will look at files in the current and sub directories and give you the file name and the line of text containing the text string...

Think about this a bit more, if it's s string replacement you could use sed...

sed -i 's/foo/foo_bar/g' *.php

* -i = edit the file "in-place": sed will directly modify the file if it finds anything to replace
* s = substitute the following text
* foo = the text string to be substituted
* foo_bar = the replacement string
* g = global, match all occurrences in the line


you need to be sure that the string your are searching for is unique !