20.9 Replacement Commands
Global search-and-replace operations are not needed often in Emacs,
but they are available. In addition to the simple M-x
replace-string command which replaces all occurrences,
there is M-% (query-replace), which presents each occurrence
of the pattern and asks you whether to replace it.
The replace commands normally operate on the text from point to the
end of the buffer; however, in Transient Mark mode (see Transient Mark), when the mark is active, they operate on the region. The
replace commands all replace one string (or regexp) with one
replacement string. It is possible to perform several replacements in
parallel using the command expand-region-abbrevs
(see Expanding Abbrevs).
