vi : replacing text globally (search and replace)

If you want to replace a text throughout a file in the vi text editor, you can use the following command :
:1,$s/text/replacement/g

Here is the breaking down of this command:

• “:” : places you in “ex mode”
• 1,$ is a range specification, meaning from the first to the last line (this can be shortened as % in some versions of VI (vim does, for instance) — Thanks Brandon !
• s means “substitute”
• /text/replacement/ means to replace the “text” pattern by “replacement”
• g : means globally, which will replace all the occurrences of the pattern instead of the first of each lines

If you want to see how to script a text replacement, check out my previous post about text replacement with sed.