Member Avatar for notuserfriendly

I am starting a new project and i plan to use c# for it. Basically what it entails to is reconfiguring a large am mount of config files. 100+ of them. They are each named differently but are prefixed the same (ex: CONFIG_FILE_xxxxxx , where x changes). Inside the files also follow a similar structure. My question is how would i go about getting started with this. The reconfiguration i plan to do to these files is edit certain parts of the files depending on their name and then saving them. The editing part is going to come from a set amount of fields (ex: ture, false, off, on ..etc) which i plan to hardcode into the program. Open to any suggestions on how about to get started with this. No code please, just suggestions of tools to use.

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Good plan — 100+ prefixed files with a small, fixed set of replacement tokens is exactly the kind of job a small utility should handle. laid out the scope, and , and point you toward programmatic processing. Below are practical, safety‑first practices and a simple workflow to make the job predictable and maintainable.

Treat the work as a pipeline: discovery → classification → transform → validate → commit. Discover files by the filename pattern and sample several to capture variations. Classify each file by name or by a simple file marker so the correct rule set is chosen. Store the transformation rules outside the program (JSON, CSV, small database) rather than hardcoding the token list; that makes tweaks safe and auditable. Implement a preview mode that generates a readable report (file, line/context, original, proposed replacement) so reviewers can sign off before any changes are made.

Validation and safety are essential. Keep originals in a timestamped backup location or under source control, and perform edits by writing edited output to a temporary file and then renaming/moving it into place to reduce partial-write risk. Log every action (file processed, replacements made, errors) in machine‑readable form so you can produce summaries: total files scanned, changes made, files skipped, and a checksum comparison afterwards. Add a clear rollback action that restores from backups if anything looks wrong.

Watch common pitfalls: file encodings and BOMs, mixed line endings, locked or read-only files, and files that look similar but are structured (XML/JSON/INI) — for structured formats use a proper parser rather than brittle text patterns. Start with a small test set, add unit tests for each rule, provide an explicit “apply” switch (default to dry-run), and if you parallelize work throttle concurrency so you don’t overload the disk. These steps keep the tool safe, reversible, and easy to maintain as your needs change.

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Member Avatar for Momerath

Take a look at DirectoryInfo.GetFiles, and the File class. Depending on the size of the files you'll want to look at ReadAllLines and WriteAllLines.

Member Avatar for ddanbe

He, that's what I had to do very often during my professional IT period some 25 years ago!
Opening a file, read line by line, make changes according to some "rules" found in another file or in a hard coded table, writing the changed line to a new file, until EOF. Repeat until all files are done. Success!

Member Avatar for thines01

Your code will be the best "tool" for this.
Even if you could find some third-party software to do this: by the time you finish configuring it to work with your files, you could write something to take care of it.

As ddanbe mentioned, so do I: I still do this kind of file manipulation for one reason or other.

Regular expressions (the Regex class) might serve you well.

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