UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am trying to locate a file or files with specific data in them. Problem is the file(s) could reside in any one of many directories.

My question is. Is there a way of recursively greping directories for the file(s) with the data I am looking for.

I have tried -
1.
$HOME> grep 47518 | ls -R > results

2.
$HOME> ls -R > grep 47518

3.
$HOME> ls -R | grep 47518

Help please!!!

pipe the results of 'find' to 'grep'.

a simple example would be you want to find all files on your system that contain the word 'unix'.

do this with:

find / | grep unix ( optionally: | less )

try this....
find . | xargs grep whatever

By George it works !!!!

find . | xargs grep -s 47518

Great stuff thanks sssow

Hhhm, want to add one more option :

find /my/dir/to/start -name \*pattern -exec grep text {} \;

Example :

find /tmp -name \*ipt -exec grep pall {} \; -exec ls -l {} \;
echo "He pall, please log of asap !!!"
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root sys 183 Jul 17 15:47 /tmp/script
server1:/root/home 1#

@yourservice
David

If this could be explained, I might see if I can use it.
At this stage I do not know what this command is doing.
The explaination of each part would be great.

Thanks.

Hi,

Sorry, I will try to make things a bit more clear :

find /tmp -name \*ipt -exec grep pall {} \; -exec ls -l {} \;

The find command you probably know. It searches for files or directorys where you want him to search and to what pattern to match.

So :
"find /tmp" says only start searching in /tmp
"-name \*ipt" says to look for a file or directory ending with "ipt" the \ before the star says to not look for a file or directory named "*ipt" but to make it a pattern
"-exec grep pall {} \;" says that the result of find in /tmp with the pattern ending on "ipt" should do the following : "grep pall /tmp/script" so {} \; is replaced with the current result. It's hard to explain the syntax, I think you should just take this as it is and copy the syntax when you need it
"-exec ls -l {} \;" has the same syntax and executes the ls -l command for the current result. If you don't do this last -exec you don't know what file he grep the text from.

Hope you understand it know. Don't forget there is always a man page from find. I know it is large, but there is so much beautifull to explore in the man from find !!

@yourservice
David