Unix Find: Question for the experts

[milanbenes]

Team,

if I am in for example my filesystem on Unix
eg:

/home/MilanB

is it possible to do a find, but to search for a string in all of the files in the file system ?


Like:

find <this string> in any files in this filesystem

Thanks,

Milan.

[Cowboy Bob]

cd <root directory to search from>
grep "whattofind" `find .`

Note that is the apostrophe below the escape key on most keyboards.

[barely_pointless]

use -->

man grep

to get all the various flavours and examples, or else buy "Unix in a Nutshell" , now there's a book that has saved my ar5e more than once.

[Chugnut]

Can't remember the exact syntax but Google the grep command.

[barely_pointless]

I prefer rm * myself.

don't forget the -r and do it from / and it may take some time ......

[Sysman]

http://www.athabascau.ca/html/depts/...HOWTO/find.htm

and see the bottom of the page.

[Euro-commuter]

don't forget the -r and do it from / and it may take some time ......

[milanbenes]

Team,

you're the best, the project wouldn't be the same without you.

Thanks,

Milan.

[Euro-commuter]

Team,

if I am in for example my filesystem on Unix
eg:

/home/MilanB

is it possible to do a find, but to search for a string in all of the files in the file system ?


Like:

find <this string> in any files in this filesystem

Thanks,

Milan.

not tested but off the top of my head

ls -R | xargs grep <string>

-R recursively lists subdirs; the superbly useful xargs splits input into sets of strings, not too many for the specified command to handle (otherwise "ls -R" may well return too many results for grep to swallow).

Edit: sorry, didn't read carefully. Do you specifically want to do a unix "find"?
What results do you want? List of all found strings, or just a list of files with the string? That would be grep -l (that's a lower case letter ell).


Note: interestingly, I described how to use grep with ls (or it could have been find) as a subsidiary tool; previous link described how to use find with grep as a subsidiary tool.

So much for unix's "have only one way of doing something".

Question: is it really true that one is subsidiary to the other, or are they coroutines?

[milanbenes]

thanks again,

top reward points go to SysMan's link

excellent

Milan.