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### 5.37 How do I perform a replace operation across more than one file?

Dired mode (`M-x dired RET`, or `C-x d`) supports the command `dired-do-find-regexp-and-replace` (`Q`), which allows users to replace regular expressions in multiple files.

You can use this command to perform search/replace operations on multiple files by following the following steps:

- Assemble a list of files you want to operate on with either `find-dired`, `find-name-dired` or `find-grep-dired`.
- Mark all files in the resulting Dired buffer using `t`.
- Use `Q` to start a `query-replace-regexp` session on the marked files.
- To accept all replacements in each file, hit `!`.

Another way to do the same thing is to use the “tags” feature of Emacs: it includes the command `tags-query-replace` which performs a query-replace across all the files mentioned in the `TAGS` file. See Identifier Search in The GNU Emacs Manual.