cat recursively

MiniMe001 · 07-14-2006, 08:48 PM

Is this possible? If not, anyone want to tell me how to write a shell script that will /make/ it possible?

I really want this for
cat --recursively | grep 'find this'
so if there's another way to do that, that'd be great. I just want to find a line of code without searching forever... >_>

pixellany · 07-14-2006, 08:59 PM

I don't see what recursive behavior in cat would mean--or what it would do. Recursion means that a program can call itself. Perhaps you can show us what the ultimate problem is.

svaucher · 07-14-2006, 09:20 PM

I guess you mean that you want to cat everything recursively in a directory.

1/ use find
% find <dir> -type f -exec cat \{} \;

2/ use tar (a bit perverted), you can use this technique to do quick network copies...
% tar cf - <dir>

If you want to find the **name** of the file that contains the pattern:

% grep -lR <pattern> <dir>

or find

% find <dir> -type f -exec grep -l <pattern> \{} \;

Hope that helps,
Stephane Vaucher

Matir · 07-14-2006, 10:42 PM

I personally like 'grep -Hr PATTERN PATH'. This will perform a recursive grep on all the files in path and subdirectories for the pattern PATTERN, then print out data of the form:

Code:

log.txt: This is a log entry containing PATTERN.

MiniMe001 · 07-15-2006, 11:40 AM

Thanks, all. This helps a good bit.

firstfire · 07-16-2006, 04:59 PM

I prefer the following:

$ find . | xargs grep 'TEXT'
or
$ grep 'TEXT' `find .`

Note: in the second command back ticks: `` used, not apostrophes: ''. Dot (.) means a current directory.

Matir · 07-16-2006, 05:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by firstfire

I prefer the following:

$ find . | xargs grep 'TEXT'
or
$ grep 'TEXT' `find .`

Note: in the second command back ticks: `` used, not apostrophes: ''. Dot (.) means a current directory.

The disadvantage of these is that they do not print the name of the file containing the line in question.

firstfire · 07-17-2006, 12:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matir

The disadvantage of these is that they do not print the name of the file containing the line in question.

If you want filenames, just add '-H' option to `grep':

Code:

 grep -H 'text' `find .`

Matir · 07-17-2006, 12:17 AM

True. In hindsight, that would work with the xargs version as well. Ignore my previous remarks, lol.