Hi, What is the syntax to search f

[dshaw21369]

Hi,
What is the syntax to search for a phrase inside of a file?
for example if I want to search for First name in several files in on the server under root?

 

[bi]

man grep.

grep "First name" file1 file2 file3

or

grep -i "first name" file1 file2 file3

The -i tells grep to ignore case.

you also can use * for the filenames.

 

[dshaw21369]

what if I want to return all the files that contain the phrase?

 

[bi]

You mean, like you don't know the filenames?

grep -i "first name" *

from the directory where the files are.

If you don't know which directory they are in, you could do

find / -print | xargs grep -i "first name"

Be aware that a find like that will eat resources.

 

[Ygor]

From 'man grep'

-l Only the names of files with matching lines
are listed (once), separated by newlines.

 

[dshaw21369]

Great!! Thanks!!!