How to grep a string in a directory tree with arbitrary depth? 2

[cyan01]

There are multiple ascii files in a directory tree with arbitrary depth, for instance:

$HOME/file1.txt
$HOME/dir_1/.../dir_n/file_b.txt
......
......
$HOME/yyy_1/.../yyy_m/file_a.txt

How can I write a unix script to grep a string, say 'this string', from the directory tree listed above?

Note: I don't know how many sub-directories under $HOME, nor do I know the filenames and directory names. But I need to grep a given string from all files under $HOME.

Many thanks!

 

[parbhani]

Hi ,

One simple option can be ,

find $HOME -exec grep -i "your string" {} \;

or if you want to see just the file names with your pattern,

find $HOME -exec grep -il "your string" {} \;

Cheers

 

[cyan01]

Thank you for your prompt help!

I just tried the command on Solaris 8. It seems not working :-(. The process just hangs there and never completes. Nothing is returned.

 

[cyan01]

Here is my detailed tsting output:

%find . -exec grep -i| "this string" {}\;
find: incomplete statement
smith: Command not found

%find . -exec grep -i "this string" {}\;

The above command just hangs there. Nothing is returned.

 

[cyan01]

BTW, I am using csh.

 

[CaKiwi]

You seem to have a | (vertical bar) instead of an lower case l (ell) as a parameter for the grep and you are missing a space before the \.

Try cutting and pasting parbhani's solution. It seems correct to me, although I don't have a unix system to try it on at the moment.

CaKiwi

 

[cyan01]

I know the answer now.

If using solaris grep, the command is:

%find . -exec grep "smith" {} \; -print

If using gnu grep, then

% find . -exec grep "smith" {} \;

will be fine.

Thank you all very much!

 

[stefanwagner]

grep -R 'your String' *

 

[toolkit]

How about either print out the file names:

find . -type f | xargs grep -l xxx

Or print out each file contents:

find . -type f | xargs grep -n hello

Or something similar. Cheers, Neil

 

[KenDogg]

Does the "grep -R string *" command that stefanwagner posted on May 3rd work? I tried on our Sun Solaris8 platform and there is not a -R option for recursive search, so I can only see the other solutions working for us (i.e. find . -exec grep...) Has anyone found a recursive option for grep or egrep in Solaris? Thanks, KenDogg

 

[johngiggs]

Ken,

I'm not sure what other flavors of UNIX support the -R option, but Linux supports it. We don't have it on our HP-UX 10.20 or Solaris servers.

John

 

[stefanwagner]

On linux there is a rgrep, which is the same as grep -r. (Both: gnu)

And won't gnu-grep compile on HP-UX, Solaris, ...
I always get huge makefiles with sections for a dozen of platforms - don't know this for grep, since I don't have the source available.

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