$ find . -name '*.c' -exec perl -i -pe 's/\btheOldName\b/theNewName/g' \{} \;It’s like using a linter: you do it because it’s the right thing to do and doing it without the tool confers no benefit and is prone to error.
That _is_ the refactoring tool in my IDE (emacs). i demonstrated replacing _all_of them at once, not replacing them each by hand.
> ... because it’s the right thing to do and doing it without the tool confers no benefit and is prone to error.
There was nothing in my post done "without the tool." Shell/find/perl _is_ the tool for C refactoring, and has been for decades.
> i demonstrated replacing _all_of them at once, not replacing them each by hand.
That is my advice for everyone completing their first Python tutorial: learn a typed language next if you aspire to do serious work. It also saves you writing many manual tests that you had to make otherwise, as the compiler makes that superfluous. Plus your IDE becomes a superpower.
It's long been my experience that that only works with high-level languages (specifically, those with bytecode), not C (especially once symbols are generated from macros). (OTOH, i've not touched an IDE in well more than 10 years.)
Also, it's long been my experience that any half-decent IDE is still a pale shadow of Emacs.
It's long been that your experience is outdated. A modern IDE will refactor C code just fine, and emacs is a pale shadow of a proper IDE. I understand you are proud to be using an old tool and doing things "the old fashioned way" but you are just using an objectively worse tool for this thing you're talking about throughout the thread. Find and replace is not the correct way to rename a method or variable for obvious reasons.
Emacs. Uninterrupted since the 1990s.