//A suggested [[wiki:requirements-commons|requirement]] for a living knowledge commons wiki//

====== Search and replace ======

Many if not all wikis offer a search function where you can search for text across the wiki content, but not a search-and-replace function.

===== Why is this desirable? =====

Particularly in cases of wiki pages changing their names, it is useful to be able to change the text of the wikilink throughout the wiki. I believe some wikis offer this automatically when one changes a page name, but I'm not sure. In any case, a global search and replace tool would be useful for other editing purposes besides changes of page name. 

===== How it could work, and issues =====

This should be no problem for wikis based on text files, as search and replace is very easy with basic unix tools. I don't know how this might work in wikis with relational database content.

One obvious issue is with cross-domain wikis. This would need to be done only with the appropriate permissions. If the linked wiki domain did not give permission, this would need to be flagged as a potential search and replace for people with the appropriate domain permissions.

===== Evaluation, or existing implementations =====

Unknown.