Help with grep (or similar command)

tejama · 02-21-2008, 08:31 AM

What command can I use to search through a directory of files and display any file names that contain a certain string in it's text?

Hope that's clear and thanks in advance.

timnp · 02-21-2008, 08:35 AM

Lots of ways to do this.

If you must do it with grep then do this...

find | grep PartsOfFileName

Or did you mean that the text has to be acutally in the file? The above finds file with the text in their names/paths

tejama · 02-21-2008, 08:37 AM

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm actually looking to find text in the body of the file.

catbird · 02-21-2008, 09:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tejama

What command can I use to search through a directory of files and display any file names that contain a certain string in it's text?

Hope that's clear and thanks in advance.

find . -iname "filename*" -print0 | xargs -0 ls -ld > out.txt
never mind ... you don't want this. You want to search inside files. Sorry

sycamorex · 02-21-2008, 09:34 AM

Try:

grep phrase_you_are_looking_for file

timnp · 02-21-2008, 09:52 AM

Maybe this:

grep -lir "the text to search for in quotes" *

-l makes it just list the filenames and paths
-i makes it case insensitive. can be much faster if you remove this
-r makes it search in subfolders etc

Have any of these suggestions helped you find your file yet?

tejama · 02-21-2008, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sycamorex

grep phrase_you_are_looking_for file

Nope...this isn't what I was looking for at all.

sycamorex · 02-21-2008, 03:35 PM

Quote:

I'm actually looking to find text in the body of the file.

Isn't it what 'grep text_you_are_looking_for file' does?

If not, can you be more specific?

griffey · 02-21-2008, 03:47 PM

How about:

grep "string_you_are_looking_for" -lr /path/to/directory

-r is for looking recursively through all subdirectories as well
-l (lowercase L) tells it (IIRC) to stop at the first instance of a match (rather than continuing to search the file) and then display the entire path to the file

Good luck.

G.--

tejama · 02-21-2008, 09:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sycamorex

Isn't it what 'grep text_you_are_looking_for file' does?

If not, can you be more specific?

I'm looking to output a list of files that have a certain string in the body. I believe your command just searches an individual file that you have to specify.

frndrfoe · 02-21-2008, 10:46 PM

err..
Did you see the post from timnp?

Ashok_mittal · 02-22-2008, 12:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tejama

I'm looking to output a list of files that have a certain string in the body. I believe your command just searches an individual file that you have to specify.

grep -rl <string> ./
this command will show the list of files under current directory which are having the string in the body

tejama · 02-22-2008, 06:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frndrfoe

err..
Did you see the post from timnp?

Sorry...somehow skipped over this timnp's post. Much thanks to you all (especially timnp!)