Find/grep command to find matching files, print filename, then print matching content

stefanlasiewski · 05-28-2005, 04:01 PM

I'm looking for a find command which will do the following:

Find files that match some criteria
Grep for some text in those files
If grep finds matching text, print the filename, and then print the matching lines

Here's an example of what I am looking for:

./dir1/filename1
hello world
hello universe
./filename2
# Prints "hello penguin"
if [ $answer -eq "hello penguin" ]; then
./dir1/dir2/dir3/filename3
Post written by jellohellofellow on Aug 3, 2004

Seems simple, right? But I haven't found anything that does what I want.

Most people do this:

find . -type f |xargs grep hello

But I'm looking for a method that doesn't use xargs.

I see this alot:

find . -exec grep hello {} \; -print

But that command prints the results of 'grep hello' before it prints the filename, like this:

hello world
hello universe
./dir1/filename1
# Prints "hello penguin"
if [ $answer -eq "hello penguin" ]; then
./filename2
./dir1/dir2/dir3/filename3
Post written by jellohellofellow on Aug 3, 2004
./dir1/dir2/dir3/filename3

This is messy.

On most Unix distros, you can do this:

find . -exec grep -l hello {} \;

However, not all flavors of grep support the -l (--files-with-matches) flag. Also, this command only prints the matching files; it doesn't print the lines that match.

ToniT · 05-28-2005, 04:43 PM

How about

Code:

find . -exec grep -Hn hello {} \;

?

stefanlasiewski · 05-28-2005, 05:35 PM

Thanks for the help, but I'm not sure if that will work. I'm working with a very primitive form of grep that doesn't support alot of the fancy features in GNU Grep.

I'll try it when I get back.

I'm working with Solaris 8 right now, but I'm also looking for a universal solution that works on AIX, HPUX, Alpha, and most flavors of Linux. GNU did it the right way. All the other vendors should follow GNU's lead.

ToniT · 05-28-2005, 05:53 PM

Are you sure there is no GNU version of grep available already (eg. with a name ggrep)?

I tested with the most archaic grep I could found
(the binary contains comment "SunOS 5.8 Generic February 2000") and
I got the command

Code:

find . -exec grep -n hello /dev/null {} \;

to do the same thing as my previous example in Linux systems.

Other solution is to compile working grep by yourself:
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/base/grep

stefanlasiewski · 05-29-2005, 05:07 PM

That works great! Thanks.

Clever trick with the /dev/null . Without it, I don't get the filename, just the line numbers. With /dev/null, it looks like grep sees at least two files and knows to print the name of both files.

Thanks a bunch!

jonaskoelker · 05-29-2005, 06:07 PM

I know it's overkill, but this should also work

$ find / exec grepper.sh pattern {} \;
grepper.sh:

Code:

if grep "$1" "$2" &> /dev/null; then
    echo "$1"
    grep "$1" "$2"

add grep args to taste

hth --Jonas

Sukhwinder Singh · 09-18-2006, 04:02 AM

My solution is:

#find / -print -exec grep 'hello' {} \;

digitalDNA · 01-06-2008, 03:10 AM

Hello,

I use this form:

find . -exec grep -H -n 'hello' {} \;

-H -n display filename and line number

If you need another 'piped' grep, you can do this:

find . -exec grep -H -n 'hello' {} \; | grep 'line should contain this too'

Best Regards.

boskyo · 12-18-2013, 06:36 PM

I use find with xargs and it works well. Though it is a bit to type it can have further pipes attached at the end.

Leave off the -i and -n as desired.

Here is an example:

>> find . -name '*.[ch]' -print0 | xargs -0 -I file grep -inH 'gpio_request' file
./adi/adv7511_core-adi-fork-drm.c:859: ret = devm_gpio_request_one(&i2c->dev, adv7511->gpio_pd,
./via-camera.c:199: ret = gpio_request(cam->power_gpio, "viafb-camera");
./via-camera.c:204: ret = gpio_request(cam->reset_gpio, "viafb-camera");

fkoff · 06-30-2016, 06:30 PM

grep ‘^1[0-9][0-9][0-9]:’ /etc/passwd | cut –d ‘:’ –f1,3
date + "%A%d%B%y" display date