How to use grep to search for a specific variable..

memo007 · 02-24-2007, 05:26 PM

One quick question, how do i use grep to look through all files in a folder for a specific variable .

Quakeboy02 · 02-24-2007, 05:30 PM

This is the way I do it. There are shorter command strings, but I've not bothered to learn them.

Code:

find /xxx -print |xargs grep string

colucix · 02-24-2007, 05:33 PM

What do you mean for "specific variable"? Grep by itself is not recursive, but you can consider using find to search for some or all the files inside a directory (and eventually its subdirectory) and issue grep on them. A way to do this is

Code:

find . -type f | xargs grep string

where string is any pattern you are looking for. It could be also

Code:

find . -type f | xargs grep $var

if the value of $var is the string you are looking for.

Edit: Quakeboy02 was faster than me in posting the replay

Sorry for redundancy!

memo007 · 02-24-2007, 05:41 PM

For instance i have a php or txt file and i want to look inside the script for a specific variable
I've seen it done like this grep -n -p 'whatever' -
But that didnt work so any advice on how to make it work.
Thanks

Quote:

Originally Posted by colucix

What do you mean for "specific variable"? Grep by itself is not recursive, but you can consider using find to search for some or all the files inside a directory (and eventually its subdirectory) and issue grep on them. A way to do this is

Code:

find . -type f | xargs grep string

where string is any pattern you are looking for. It could be also

Code:

find . -type f | xargs grep $var

if the value of $var is the string you are looking for.

Edit: Quakeboy02 was faster than me in posting the replay

Sorry for redundancy!

PuppetZ · 02-24-2007, 05:52 PM

Do you mean:

> grep something *

??