Is this what you mean?

$ perl -pi -e's/this phrase/that locution/g' /path/to/*.txt
$
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First thanks for your reply. in case that all files are not resides under the same level this would not work correctly, I might use - find <dir> -name "*" -exec perl -pi -e's/this phrase/that locution/g' {} \; Azaria

Here's a solution that does it all in perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;
use File::Find;
use Tie::File;

find (\&replace,"/path/to/directory");

sub replace {
    my $cur_file=$File::Find::name;
    return if (!-f $cur_file || !-w $cur_file);

    tie my @file_content,'Tie::File',$cur_file
        or die "Couldn't tie file $cur_file";

    for (@file_content) {
        s/this phrase/that locution/g;
    }
}
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You may want to read the Tie::File perldoc regarding file locking and memory consumption.

And just for completeness, here's a solution that does it all without perl:

find this/ -type f -exec sed -i 's/gg/dd/g' {} \;
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Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -- Brian W. Kernighan