UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

If I use this I get the message 'grep: illegal option --r'.

It's Sun 4.1, maybe that explains it...

Interesting. This must be a new feature. I have GNU grep v2.0 on my Linux box. Thanks for the info!

As I recall, there is often a problem using

Code:

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

I haven't used this in a while, but I recall getting errors because this usage of find also 'finds' directories, binaries, and just about everything else under the sun. Because it finds binaries, directories, etc. it attempts to search them and gets pretty messy.

Code:

find . -type r -exec grep string {} /dev/null \;

Will find only regular files, and not directories, but does not stop the grep from searching large binaries, as I recall. That is why I usually don't use this combo for grepping strings and forgot about this one. I don't recall a switch in find to stop it from 'finding' binary files. Perhaps there is ?

Well I usually narrow it down a bit. Something like:

find . -name \*.h -exec grep &lt;<I>etc</I>&gt;



Another good one is something like this:

grep &lt;string&gt; `file * | egrep 'script|text' | awk -F: '{print $1}'`

Not perfect, but I've used it a few times. A little more complicated to do recursive this way though...

[Edited by PxT on 02-01-2001 at 11:22 AM]