Help With GREP Command

juliettree · 04-08-2004, 06:59 AM

Hi

I'm just getting to grips with all the Linux lingo but need some help on using the GREP command

I believe this can be used to find strings of data within files but not sure of the syntax. And can you use it to search more than just the current directory you are in?

Eg. I need to find the file that has our SMTP Server IP address in. I have the IP address but a little unsure of where to start looking. All the files I thought it may be in it isn't!

Thanks

juliettree · 04-08-2004, 08:00 AM

I've cracked it!

Using grep -l 'ipaddress' *

Had to go through the various directories hanging directly off / but got there in the end.

Was long winded though so if anyone knows how to search through all the directories in one try or just has a better way then please let me know for future reference!

Thanks

kvedaa · 04-08-2004, 08:15 AM

One method of performing a recursive grep is:

find . –type f –print | xargs grep “Item to search for here”

On the boxes that I admin I put this into a little shell script that I call rgrep, so that I can feed my search value in without needed to retype this line everytime I want to perform a recursive grep.

juliettree · 04-08-2004, 08:44 AM

Hi

Thanks.

Gave it a go and was definitely a lot quicker!

Maybe this linux stuff is starting to fall into place at last!