UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi all,

it possible creating a file with list of directories, and using grep to find pattern on only directories and subdirectories contained in that file?
And it is done?

regards

Yes it is. As a start try the find command to generate your list. You can either redirect output to a file and use grep on it or just use a pipe and hand it over to grep to search your pattern.

Can you give me an example of how it is done with grep?

imagine that i have
dir
- subdir1
- subdir2
- subdir3
- subdir4
- subdir5

and my list contains subdir2 and subdir 4.

how can use this list with grep?

actually i'm using this

Code:

grep -rwn --exclude=\*.svn\* pattern ./ to search

the problem this will search in all subdir. if i have 100 subdir and i only want results from 30subdirs
after utilize this command will return a lot of info, as you can see also will return lot info that i don't care.

regards

Moderator's Comments:

Use code tags, you got a PM.

I am not sure if I understood what you want to achieve. Anyway here is an example.
Given your list A.txt that contains the search patterns:

Code:

subdir2
subdir4

and some directory structure on disk like:

Code:

subdir1
subdir2
subdir3
subdir4
subdir5
subdir6
...

and lot's of stuff you don't want, you could try like:

Code:

find /entry/dir -type d -name "subdir*" | grep -f A.txt

that command doesn't work for what i want.
let me see if i can explain better (english is not my native language).
i have one directory, with multiples sub-directories, each sub-directories has multiples files.
what i want is searching of certain pattern in files contained in some sub-directories, not all sub-directories, in other words, the names of this certain directories will be in list.txt.

something like this, search "qwerty" in all files in directories in the list.txt
i hope i have explained better.

regards