UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi Guys

This is my first post so I am not sure how things go here. I'm sorry if I'm breaking the rule or something. Feel free to correct me about that

So as I was saying...

I'd been trying to grep this folder containing 900,000 txt files but seems no luck. I get either "No such file or directory" or "Argument list too long" error each time I tried.

Here is the 2 final commands I used (I'm trying to grab all lines containing "[" btw)

"

Code:

find .location -name "*.txt" | while read file; do grep -f '\[' $file > grep.txt; done

"
[I get too many "No such file or directory"]

"

Code:

find .location -name "*.txt" -exec grep -l '\[' $file >> grep.txt '{}' \;

"
[No errors for this but it didn't do what it suppose to, only got 1 file result in the end.]

If grep is really impossible to achieve this, I do not mind using "cat" to compile all txt into one and "grep" that one big chunk of txt file. I'd also tried that but I could never escaped from "No such file or directory" or "Argument list too long" error.

Thank you so much for your help in advance guys.


Cheers

Hi what is it the you are trying to do? Get a list of files that contain a opening sqare bracket?

In the first command, grep should probably be a grep -l, rather than grep -f ?

In the second command the >> grep.txt redirection is in the wrong place

Hi
Sorry, yes it was suppose to be

Code:

grep -l

. I tried with both

Code:

-f

and

Code:

-l

but still get the same error.

And yes I am trying to compile all the lines containing "[" into one txt file from 900,000.

I'd been trying to do it many ways but I always end up with "No such file or directory" or "Argument list too long" error Some txt file name contain special characters but I managed to convert all of them from ".html" to become ".txt" by using -exec . I was hoping that could do the same to this execution. But my coding knowledge is not that flexible

With the first approach try:

Code:

find .location -name "*.txt" | while read file; do grep -l '\[' "$file" ; done > grep.txt

or with the second approach ( which which I would expect to be faster )

Code:

find .location -name "*.txt" -exec grep -l '\[' {} + > grep.txt

--
You could also try and see if grep -Fl '[' rather than grep -l '\[' is any faster

THANK YOU SO MUCH! IT WORKED! No errors or whatsoever


I used this command :

Code:

find . -name "*.txt" -exec grep '\[' {} + > grep.txt

I removed -l to grab the content as with -l , it seemed to get only the directory.

Thank you so much! Been googling whole day yesterday until my brain almost explode. This forum is the best

You're welcome. Careful with the "." and "grep.txt" . Maybe give it a file extension other than ".txt", otherwise it is also part of the find operation..

yes I redirected the output text outside the working folder