UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I need to go through all the files on my system and build a list/output file with the paths of all files where the first two characters within the file match an expression.

I know I can use something like

Code:

find . | xargs cut -b1-2

or

Code:

find . -exec cut -b1-2 {} \;

to get the characters I need and then use grep to match it, but then I don't have the file path that I need.

I may be going about this the totally wrong way, so any suggestions would be very appreciated.

Thanks.

Please help me in understanding your problem.
suppose you run the program in root i.e. /

you will get ./PATH/FILE
then your cut will cut first 2 chars of this string i.e. "./"

Explain...

I've found a solution for what I am after

Code:

find . -exec grep -l "^[ab]" {} \;

This will give me a list of file paths for files where the first two characters within the file are "ab". I can redirect this output into a file to get what I need.

why not this

Code:

find . -type f -name "[ab]*"