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From: mo@wgivax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: Need unix command file HELP!
Message-ID: <135@wgivax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 2-Feb-86 09:43:44 EST
Article-I.D.: wgivax.135
Posted: Sun Feb  2 09:43:44 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Feb-86 03:23:10 EST
References: <245@aero.ARPA>, <2981@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Lines: 35
Keywords: Unix, string search, Sake o nomimasu ka?

> From: chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek)
> $ find / -exec egrep "pattern" {} \; -print 2> /dev/null

An excellent answer to the find strings in any file request.
I have a few suggestions to add:

      * if you only want the file names, use '-l' flag with
		one of the grep variants and you won't have to worry
		about redirecting stderr and out seperately
		(you won't need '-print' flag to find)

	  * if you are looking for specific strings, as opposed to
	    regular expressions, use fgrep instead of egrep

      * to print context, look into "cgrep", posted to net.source
        a short while back -- it allows you to print m lines before
		and n lines after each match

      * you only want to look at files, so add '-type f' to find

You end up with:

$ find / -type f -exec fgrep -l "string" {} \; > file

Some notes:

      * '/' can be replaced by any directory to search its sub-tree

	  * if you are looking for the same strings at periodic times,
		you might want to consider keeping a "current" file listing
		the occurrences, adding '-newer file' to the find command,
		and appending to the file, thus negating the need to pick
		up all occurrences every time.

Mike O'Shea    decvax!mcnc!unccvax!wgivax!mo