UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,

I have a directory that contains about 50,000 files. I need to look for 1500 product id numbers amongst all 50, 000.

So far, I have managed to be productive by doing a
"find . -exec grep 'my_sku_number' {} \;" but it is SLOWWWW.

1/ I have tried this:
"find . -exec grep <file_list_of_1500_skuS.txt {} \;"
...does not work...

2/ I have tried this too:
"find . <file_list_of_1500_skuS.txt > file.out" ...does not work...

3/ I have tried this too:
"grep <file_list_of_1500_skuS.txt > file.out" ...does not work...

Is there a way to feed my list of sku numbers all at once??? Can it be done? HELP!!!!!!!!

Al.

you can write a shell script to get the product id from a file and loop it 1500 times. Redirect the output to a file the first time and start appending second time and on.

This won't be any faster than the first method you metioned but at least you don't have to do it by hand and you will get a nice result in one file.

Any other suggestions?

As usual we don't have any clues as to which version of unix we have here. With a modern version of grep,
ls -f | xargs grep -lFf file_list_of_1500_skuS.txt

will list the names of the files that contain lines that match the numbers in file_list_of_1500_skuS.txt.

Thank for helping. Your answer was exactly what I looked for

The OS I am running is "HP-UX k9 B.11.00 U 9000/800"

Thanks again.

Al.