This works too:
find /dirname -exec grep -l 'whatever text' {} \;
-----Original Message-----
From: Glynn Clements [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 1998 4:30 PM
To: Dave
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Newbie: Searching sub directories for text
Dave wrote:
> How can I search a directory and all of its sub directories for a file
> containing a specified text string.
Use find and [f]grep.
> I know how to use grep to search a
> single directory but is there a way to make it search all of the sub
> directories too?
>
> I tried using Find along with Grep:
>
> find / -type f -print | xargs grep <string_to_search_for>
In general,
find / -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep <string_to_search_for>
is preferable, as it will cope with filenames which contain spaces.
> But I get the error message:
>
> grep: warning: /proc/kcore: operation not supported by device
Don't search /proc. You can use
find / -path /proc -prune -o ...
to eliminate just /proc, or
find / -mount ...
to prevent find from crossing filesystem boundaries.
> It trys to search files that grep can not deal with, generates error
> messages and fills the screen up with junk. Is there a way to limit the
> search to scripts, config files and source files?
Not easily. You would have to have to run `file' on each file that is
found, and only run grep if the output from file indicates that it is
suitable.
> Maybe there is another program that I should be using??
Not really. There isn't a `is this a text file' utility as such.
--
Glynn Clements <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
