[SOLVED] how to search word in group of files using command

sumeet inani · 10-12-2009, 09:33 AM

to pixellany
What a nice repertoire of books to learn linux.
MY QUESTION
How can i search files in subfolders which contain my pattern in their content.As I have observed does not happen in

grep pattern *

chrism01 · 10-12-2009, 06:16 PM

As mentioned previously, use the -r (recursive option) see http://linux.die.net/man/1/grep

sumeet inani · 10-14-2009, 08:09 AM

To Doculus,
grep -i pattern -r
hangs up the terminal with blinking cursor & no result.
Though 'grep -i pattern * -r' works well.
and 'grep -i pattern * -rc' shows the number of lines in which word occurs(line may contain multiple times but counted one).So i think you forgot adding * in your post.

sumeet inani · 11-03-2009, 08:07 AM

find . | xargs grep -i pattern

Can you explain the working of this command.I read man page of xargs but did not understand its role here.

pixellany · 11-03-2009, 08:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sumeet inani

find . | xargs grep -i pattern

Can you explain the working of this command.I read man page of xargs but did not understand its role here.

Loosely, xargs takes the input and causes it to be used as an argument list by the next command.

Example:

Code:

[mherring@Ath play]$ find . |grep brown
[mherring@Ath play]$ find . |xargs grep brown
./words:brown
[mherring@Ath play]$ grep brown *
words:brown

In the first case, grep just looks in the filename, with xargs it reads the files---just as if the third case was used.

sumeet inani · 11-09-2009, 07:46 AM

SOLUTION FOR ALL

if you want to find a word in folder without including subfolders then
grep -i pattern *

If you want to find word in folder & search recursively in subfolders then
grep -r -i pattern *

You can add -c option in above if you only want the count of lines containing the pattern in files(NOTE that pattern appearing twice or more times in a line counts to only one)

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