UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi!

I am trying to find all text files in my home directory that contain the string "C-d" so I tyied this :

Code:

cd ~

find . -type f -exec grep -l "C-d" {} +

but it took very long so I tryed this :

Code:

 ls -aR | xargs file |grep text

but it didn't descend in the directories and it said :

xargs: unmatched single quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option

What do I have to do to see all text files in my home directory?

Thanks,

Miha

Moderator's Comments:

Please use next time code tags for your code and data

I bet the reason its taking so long is that it is checking ALL files for your string, not just text files. If your text files have a common extension, try this:

Code:

find . -name "*.txt" -type f -exec grep "C-d" {} \;

They don't.

Code:

find . -type f -exec grep -l "C-d" {} +

Looks ok to me providing all the files found by "find" are to be searched.

If you have a significant proportion of non-text files or irrelevant large files then it can be worth checking each file with the "file" command and/or using the "-size +limit" parameter to "find".