Linux find all files with string

Linux / UNIX Recursively Search All Files For A String

H ow do I recursively search all text files for a string such as foo under UNIX / Linux / *BSD / Mac OS X shell prompt?

You can use grep command or find command as follows to search all files for a string or words recursively.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	No
Requirements	Linux or Unix with grep and find utilities
Est. reading time	2 minutes

How to use grep command to recursively search All files for a String

The syntax is as follows for the grep command to find all files under Linux or Unix in the current directory:
cd /path/to/dir
grep -r «word» .
grep -r «string» .
The -r option read/sarch all files under each directory, recursively, following symbolic links only if they are on the command line. In other words, it will look into sub-directories too. We can also state path as follows:
grep -r ‘something’ /path/to/dir

Following symtlinks

The following syntax will read and search all files under each directory, recursively. Follow all symbolic links too by passing the -R (capital R ):
grep -R ‘word’ .
grep -R ‘string-to-search’ /path/to/dir/

Case sensitive recursive search

To ignore case distinctions, try:
grep -ri «word» .

Displaying files name when searching for a string/word

To display print only the filenames with GNU grep, enter:
grep -r -l «foo» .
You can also specify directory name:
grep -r -l «foo» /path/to/dir/*.c

Using find command to search recursively

find command is recommend because of speed and ability to deal with filenames that contain spaces.

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Older UNIX version should use xargs to speed up things:
find /path/to/dir -type f | xargs grep -l «foo»
It is good idea to pass -print0 option to find command that it can deal with filenames that contain spaces or other metacharacters:
find /path/to/dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -l «foo»
OR use the following OSX/BSD/find or GNU/find example:

Sample outputs from the last command:

Fig.01: Unix and Linux: How to Grep Recursively?

Finding all files containing specific text on Linux

Say you want to find orange and mango words, then try:
grep -r -E ‘orange|mango’ .
grep -r -E ‘orange|mango’ /dir/to/search/
This is how you set up pattern
grep -r -e ‘pattern’ /dir/to/search
For extended grep (see egrep command for regular expressions):
egrep -r ‘word’ /dir/to/search/
egrep -r ‘regex’ /dir/to/search/
We can combine all options too:
grep -rnw -e ‘pattern’ /dir/to/search/
egrep -rnw ‘regex’ /path/to/search/

How to search only files that have specific extensions

Want to search files having either ‘.pl’ or ‘.php’ extensions for foo() ? Try:
grep —include=\*. -rnw «foo()» /dir/to/search/
egrep —include=\*. -rnw «regex» /dir/to/search/
We can skip any command-line file with a name suffix that matches the pattern GLOB, using wildcard matching. For instance, exclude all .bin files:
grep —exclude=\*.bin -r -n -0 ‘string_to_search’ /path/
egrep —exclude=\*.bin -r -n -0 ‘regex’ /path/to/search/
When searching recursively, we can skip any subdirectory whose base name matches wildcard. For instance, skip includes and docs directory:

Understanding grep command options that used for searching text files

• -r : Rrecursive search
• -i : Ignore case distinctions in patterns and data
• -w : Match only whole words
• -n : Show line number with output lines
• -e ‘pattern’ : Use PATTERNS for matching
• -E : All search PATTERNS are extended regular expressions
• —include=GLOB : Search only files that match GLOB (a file pattern)
• —exclude=GLOB : Skip files that match GLOB
• —exclude-dir=GLOB : Skip directories that match GLOB

GLOB means to expand to wildcard patterns. For example, GLOB, *.txt means all files ending with .txt extension. A string is a wildcard pattern if it contains one of the following characters:

1. ? – Matches any single character.
2. * – Matches any string, including the empty string.
3. [

Globbing is the operation that expands a wildcard pattern into the list of path-names matching the pattern.

Summing up

You learned how to search for text, string, or words recursively on Linux, macOS, *BSD, and Unix-like systems. See the following man pages:
man grep
man find
man 3 glob
man 7 glob

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Finding a File Containing a Particular Text String In Linux Server

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	No
Requirements	grep
Est. reading time	Less than 2 minutes

You need to use the grep command. The grep command or egrep command searches the given input FILEs for lines containing a match or a text string.

grep command syntax for finding a file containing a particular text string

The syntax is:
grep » text string to search » directory-path
grep [option] » text string to search » directory-path
grep -r » text string to search «directory-path
grep -r -H » text string to search » directory-path
egrep -R » word-1|word-2 » /path/to/directory
egrep -w -R » word-1|word-2 » directory-path
Let us see some common example on how to use grep to search for strings in files.

How to search and find all files for a given text string

In this example, search for a string called ‘redeem reward’ in all text (*.txt) files located in /home/tom/ directory, use:
$ grep «redeem reward» /home/tom/*.txt
OR
$ grep «redeem reward»

Task: Search all subdirectories recursively

You can search for a text string all files under each directory, recursively with -r option:
$ grep -r «redeem reward» /home/tom/
OR
$ grep -R «redeem reward» /home/tom/
Look for all files containing cacheRoot text on Linux:
grep -R cacheRoot /home/vivek/

Trying to find all files containing specific text on my Linux desktop

Task: Only display filenames

By default, the grep command prints the matching lines. You can pass -H option to print the filename for each match:
$ grep -H -r «redeem reward» /home/tom
Sample outputs:

To just display the filename use the cut command as follows:
$ grep -H -R vivek /etc/* | cut -d: -f1
Sample outputs:

Task: Suppress file names

The grep command shows output on a separate line, and it is preceded by the name of the file in which it was found in the case of multiple files. You can pass the -h option to suppress inclusion of the file names in the output:
$ grep -h -R ‘main()’

Task: Display only words

You can select only those lines containing matches that form whole words using the -w option. In this example, search for word ‘getMyData()’ only in

/projects/ dirctory:
$ grep -w -R ‘getMyData()’

Task: Search for two or more words

Use the egrep command as follows:
$ egrep -w -R ‘word1|word2’

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Task: Hide warning spam

grep command generate error message as follows due to permission and other issues:

No such file or directory
No such device or address
Permission denied

To hide all errors or warning message spam generated by the grep command, append 2>/dev/null to grep command. This will send and hide unwanted output to /dev/null device:
$ grep -w -R ‘getMyData()’

Task: Display matched text in color

Pass the —color option to the grep command display matched text/words in color on the terminal:

Fig.01: grep command in action with colors and hiding the warnings on screen

Task: Ignore case

Our final example ignore case distinctions in both the search PATTERN and the input files:
grep -i -R ‘word’ /path/to/dir
grep -i -r ‘income tax’

How do I find all files containing specific text on Linux?

The syntax is:
egrep ‘pattern’ -rnw /path/to/dir/
egrep ‘word1|word2’ -rnw /home/vivek/backups/

Finding text strings within files using grep

In this example search for lines starting with any lowercase or uppercase letter:
grep «^[a-zA-Z]» -rns

• -r – Recursive search
• -R – Read all files under each directory, recursively. Follow all symbolic links, unlike -r grep option
• -n – Display line number of each matched line
• -s – Suppress error messages about nonexistent or unreadable files
• -w – Only work on words i.e. search only those lines containing matches that form whole words
• -l – Show the name of each input file when match found
• -i – Ignore case while searching

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Linux find all files with string

The commands used are mainly grep and find.

Find string in file

grep string filename

grep name file.txt

Find string in file ignoring cases

grep string filename

grep -i name file.txt

Find string in current directory

grep string .

Find string recursively

grep -r string .

Find files that do not contain a string

grep -L string .

Find string recursively in only some specific files

grep string -r . —include=*.myextension

grep string -r . —include=*.

grep «name=Oscar» -r . —include=*.js

* if you specify —include it won’t look for the string in all files, just the ones included

Find string recursively in all files except the ones that contain certain extensions

grep string -r . —exclude=*.

grep «Serializable» -rl . —exclude=*.

Find string recursively all files including some extensions and excluding others

grep string -r . —include=*.myextension —exclude=*.myextension2

grep «my=string» -r . —include=*. —exclude=*.js

*It won’t look for the string in the js files.

Find string recursively in only some specific files and show their filename

grep string -rl . —include=*.myextension

grep «name=Oscar» -rl . —include=*.js

Find files and find a string in them using find

find . -name ‘*.extension’ -exec grep string +

find . -name ‘*.txt’ -exec grep Mytext <> +

find . -type f \( -name ‘*.htm’ -or -name ‘*.html’ \) -exec grep -i «mystring» <> +

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How to Find Files in Linux Using the Command Line

When you have to find a file in Linux, it’s sometimes not as easy as finding a file in another operating system. This is especially true if you are running Linux without a graphical user interface and need to rely on the command line. This article covers the basics of how to find a file in Linux using the CLI. The find command in Linux is used to find a file (or files) by recursively filtering objects in the file system based on a simple conditional mechanism. You can use the find command to search for a file or directory on your file system. By using the -exec flag ( find -exec ), files can be found and immediately processed within the same command.

Find a File in Linux by Name or Extension

Use find from the command line to locate a specific file by name or extension. The following example searches for *.err files in the /home/username/ directory and all sub-directories:

Using Common find Commands and Syntax to Find a File in Linux

find expressions take the following form:

• The options attribute will control the find process’s behavior and optimization method.
• The starting/path attribute will define the top-level directory where find begins filtering.
• The expression attribute controls the tests that search the directory hierarchy to produce output.

Consider the following example command:

This command enables the maximum optimization level (-O3) and allows find to follow symbolic links ( -L ). find searches the entire directory tree beneath /var/www/ for files that end with .html .

Basic Examples

Command	Description
find . -name testfile.txt	Find a file called testfile.txt in current and sub-directories.
find /home -name *.jpg	Find all .jpg files in the /home and sub-directories.
find . -type f -empty	Find an empty file within the current directory.
find /home -user exampleuser -mtime -7 -iname «.db»	Find all .db files (ignoring text case) modified in the last 7 days by a user named exampleuser.

Options and Optimization for find

The default configuration for find will ignore symbolic links (shortcut files). If you want find to follow and return symbolic links, you can add the -L option to the command, as shown in the example above.

find optimizes its filtering strategy to increase performance. Three user-selectable optimization levels are specified as -O1 , -O2 , and -O3 . The -O1 optimization is the default and forces find to filter based on filename before running all other tests.

Optimization at the -O2 level prioritizes file name filters, as in -O1 , and then runs all file-type filtering before proceeding with other more resource-intensive conditions. Level -O3 optimization allows find to perform the most severe optimization and reorders all tests based on their relative expense and the likelihood of their success.

Command	Description
-O1	(Default) filter based on file name first.
-O2	File name first, then file type.
-O3	Allow find to automatically re-order the search based on efficient use of resources and likelihood of success.
-maxdepth X	Search current directory as well as all sub-directories X levels deep.
-iname	Search without regard for text case.
-not	Return only results that do not match the test case.
-type f	Search for files.
-type d	Search for directories.

Find a File in Linux by Modification Time

The find command contains the ability to filter a directory hierarchy based on when the file was last modified:

The first command returns a list of all files in the entire file system that end with the characters conf and modified in the last seven days. The second command filters exampleuser user’s home directory for files with names that end with the characters conf and modified in the previous three days.

Use grep to Find a File in Linux Based on Content

The find command can only filter the directory hierarchy based on a file’s name and metadata. If you need to search based on the file’s content, use a tool like grep . Consider the following example:

This searches every object in the current directory hierarchy ( . ) that is a file ( -type f ) and then runs the command grep «example» for every file that satisfies the conditions. The files that match are printed on the screen ( -print ). The curly braces ( <> ) are a placeholder for the find match results. The <> are enclosed in single quotes ( ‘ ) to avoid handing grep a malformed file name. The -exec command is terminated with a semicolon ( ; ), which should be escaped ( \; ) to avoid interpretation by the shell.

How to Find and Process a File in Linux

The -exec option runs commands against every object that matches the find expression. Consider the following example:

This filters every object in the current hierarchy ( . ) for files named rc.conf and runs the chmod o+r command to modify the find results’ file permissions.

The commands run with the -exec are executed in the find process’s root directory. Use -execdir to perform the specified command in the directory where the match resides. This may alleviate security concerns and produce a more desirable performance for some operations.

The -exec or -execdir options run without further prompts. If you prefer to be prompted before action is taken, replace -exec with -ok or -execdir with -okdir .

How to Find and Delete a File in Linux

To delete the files that end up matching your search, you can add -delete at the end of the expression. Do this only when you are positive the results will only match the files you wish to delete.

In the following example, find locates all files in the hierarchy starting at the current directory and fully recursing into the directory tree. In this example, find will delete all files that end with the characters .err :

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

This page was originally published on Monday, October 25, 2010.

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