Jim, thanks for spelling it out for me. I got it to work but it's not producing the results I need. The results going to the results.txt are the actual contents of the files, and they are not matching my string fully. I need the files that contain the strings I'm searching - which I realize I didn't state clearly initially.

The 2 scripts I've come up with are:

for h in `cat strings.txt`; do echo "**$h**" ; grep -rl $h /path/to/search/ >> results.txt ; done

and

for h in `cat strings.txt`; do find /path/to/search/ -name \*xml -exec grep -l "$h" {} \; >> results.txt ; done


The grep and the find are working fine, it's the `cat` that is giving me trouble. The strings in strings.txt are getting broken up into smaller strings - which I verified by putting that echo in on the grep script.

Example of string in strings.txt is:

/sample/string in/strings file/title.jsp

The cat (and grep -f) is breaking it up into:

/sample/string
in/strings
file/title.jsp

I've tried putting the string in strings.txt in both single and double quotes:

"/sample/string in/strings file/title.jsp"
'/sample/string in/strings file/title.jsp'

and have also tried putting single and double quotes in the scripts:

for h in "`cat strings.txt`"; do echo "**$h**" ; grep -rl "$h" /path/to/search/ >> results.txt ; done

And the echo still shows the string being split into 3 smaller strings.




Thanks upstate boy

Try to change the field separator in your script:

Thanks for the suggestion Franklin52. I do see the echo showing the full string now, but the results of the grep are off.

If I do the grep manually - I get 3 files returned which is correct.

If I use my script - I get 1588 files returned.

Script now:

OIFS=$IFS
IFS=""

for h in `cat strings.txt`; do echo $h ; grep -rl "$h" /path/to/search/ >> results.txt ; done

IFS=$OIFS

Why don't you use the -f option?

I tried grep -rl -f strings.txt /path/to/search/* > result.txt

Same problem, the string in strings.txt is being split up:


/sample/string in/strings file/title.jsp

I'm guessing it is being split into these 3 strings:

/sample/string
in/strings
file/title.jsp

I know that if I do this grep, I get only 3 results as opposed to the 1588 results I get with the grep -rl -f strings.txt method.

grep -rl "/sample/string in/strings file/title.jsp" /path/to/search/*

Thanks upstate boy

Could the string in string.txt actually contain something else than plain spaces? Can you inspect it with a hex dump tool (xxd, od, what have you)?

Era - I'm not sure how to inspect in the way you are asking but I've deleted the stings.txt and created a new one with vi adding the string back - no copy/paste. When trying grep -rl -f strings.txt I'm still seeing the same behavior as already described.

Thanks upstate boy