Need to search all files for string

jmur · 03-28-2008, 01:14 PM

I need to search all files on a server for certain string. I've been told the strings command would be best. I need it to search all files in all directories.

I'm thinking of using the strings command that can do a directory, within a script that does all directories.

I have been a linux user for a while but my scripting and skills are not great.

Thanks

jailbait · 03-28-2008, 01:17 PM

The grep command may do what you want. See:

man grep

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Steve Stites

jmur · 03-28-2008, 01:21 PM

It has to search binary also.
Like say my company has been bought and the old company was called "abcd". Abcd may be in any program file or script. I need to find them all.

I'm experimenting with the strings command, and this will search all files in the current directory for the word "program" and will print the file name. I don't yet know if it's searching all types of files.

strings -af -n 7 * | grep program

colucix · 03-28-2008, 01:29 PM

An excerpt from the grep man page

Quote:

--binary-files=TYPE
If the first few bytes of a file indicate that the file contains binary data, assume that the file is of
type TYPE. By default, TYPE is binary, and grep normally outputs either a one-line message saying that a
binary file matches, or no message if there is no match.

This is the default behavior. You will only concern about searching into "all files in all directories ". You can use something like

Code:

 find / -type f -print 0 | xargs -0 grep <pattern>

This will search <pattern> into all files on your system. It may take a lot of time and resources, anyway. Better to run as root in order to avoid file access permissions problems.

ta0kira · 03-28-2008, 02:35 PM

Look at sed -i.
ta0kira