Reply to: Unix Find: Question for the experts

[OwlHoot]

cd <root directory to search from>
grep "whattofind" `find .`

Note that is the apostrophe below the escape key on most keyboards.

You don't have to cd.

find <directory_to_search_from> -print -name <wildcard> -exec grep <whattofind> {} \;

where <wildcard> is a pattern of the files you want to search, e.g. *.c (or for that matter fred.c if you only want to check files of that name).

On some versions of unix the file paths won't be printed unless you use the -print argument, although I think this is usually redundant these days.

(Needless to say none of the '<' or '>' symbols are redirects in the above.)

edit: On most unices these days the grep command has a -r option (for 'recursive', i.e. a treewalk a-la find)

[sappatz]

/home/MilanB

/home/MilanB

is a corrupted filesystem. it needs to be rebuilt from scratch and socially reformatted

[OrangeHopper]

Similar to suggestion above.

find . | xargs grep <string>

[milanbenes]

Pondlife,

less of it.

I'm doing a hardware migration

took an offline backup of the existing

created filesystems and users on the new host

restored the backup to the new host

changing the hostname EVERYWHERE to the new hostname and trying to get the system to startup

Everything's workin' fine apart from one component

Milan.

[Pondlife]

Stop

Milan,

You really think you should be doing this? Sounds a little like we're pushing out boundaries a bit. .net is far easier in a windows environment.

Remember, if you don't do it they can always get some permie to take the risk.

[milanbenes]

good work Chubba, points awarded

from what I can see there are several schools of thought on this finding a string in a file on unix

good work lads

Milan.

[chubba]

I missed the points for being too slow but I usually use:

find /home/chubba/ -type f -exec grep -H 'chubba' {} \;

To find the word 'chubba' in my home folder...

[milanbenes]

thanks again,

top reward points go to SysMan's link

excellent

Milan.

[Euro-commuter]

Team,

if I am in for example my filesystem on Unix
eg:

/home/MilanB

is it possible to do a find, but to search for a string in all of the files in the file system ?


Like:

find <this string> in any files in this filesystem

Thanks,

Milan.

not tested but off the top of my head

ls -R | xargs grep <string>

-R recursively lists subdirs; the superbly useful xargs splits input into sets of strings, not too many for the specified command to handle (otherwise "ls -R" may well return too many results for grep to swallow).

Edit: sorry, didn't read carefully. Do you specifically want to do a unix "find"?
What results do you want? List of all found strings, or just a list of files with the string? That would be grep -l (that's a lower case letter ell).


Note: interestingly, I described how to use grep with ls (or it could have been find) as a subsidiary tool; previous link described how to use find with grep as a subsidiary tool.

So much for unix's "have only one way of doing something".

Question: is it really true that one is subsidiary to the other, or are they coroutines?

[milanbenes]

Team,

you're the best, the project wouldn't be the same without you.

Thanks,

Milan.

[Euro-commuter]

don't forget the -r and do it from / and it may take some time ......

[Sysman]

http://www.athabascau.ca/html/depts/...HOWTO/find.htm

and see the bottom of the page.

[barely_pointless]

I prefer rm * myself.

don't forget the -r and do it from / and it may take some time ......

[Chugnut]

Can't remember the exact syntax but Google the grep command.

[barely_pointless]

use -->

man grep

to get all the various flavours and examples, or else buy "Unix in a Nutshell" , now there's a book that has saved my ar5e more than once.