help with grep

[farley99]

files=`grep -r test * -l | grep -v convert`

I got the first grep but
what does the
* -l | grep -v convert
do?

 

[SamBones]

My [tt]grep[/tt] (Solaris 8) doesn't seem to have the [tt]-r[/tt] switch, so I have no idea what that means.

The [tt]-l[/tt] switch means to only output the names of the files that have a match. But it should go before the word [tt]test[/tt]. The word [tt]test[/tt] is what to look for. The [tt]*[/tt] is which files to look for [tt]test[/tt] in. So the first [tt]grep[/tt] should look like...
[tt]
grep -l test *
[/tt]
...and is only listing the names of the files that contain the word [tt]test[/tt].

The vertical bar is a pipe character. The output of the first [tt]grep[/tt] is sent to the second [tt]grep[/tt]. The second grep will exclude the file names that have "convert" in them.

On Solaris, the command should look like...
[tt]
files=`grep -l test * | grep -v convert`
[/tt]
This will make the variable "[tt]files[/tt]" contain a list of files that contain the word [tt]test[/tt], but don't have the word [tt]convert[/tt] in their name.

Hope this helps.

 

[gamerland]

GNU grep has tbe -r option, which allows you to recursively search a directory tree. This removes the need to use find with grep to span the directory tree.

SamBones' interpretation is correct with the addition of:search all files in this directory and below for...

http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/doc/grep.html#SEC_Top

http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/doc/grep_13.html#SEC13