grep

[Robert Herrage]

In article <1990Oct23.123025.18012 at kodak.kodak.com>, tiefel at sunshine.Kodak.COM (Lenny Tiefel) writes:
> I have a main directory with hundreds of subdirectories, 
> and I want to find a file with a particular string, say "xyz"
> The grep command only works in one directory at a time. Is there
> a way of searching my whole directory structure to find a file
> with a particular string?

Here's a nice implementation, appropriately named "rgrep" (Recursive GREP):

#!/bin/sh

{ find . \( -name '*.*' \) -exec grep -l $* {} \; -exec grep -n $* \; -exec echo \; | more; }

By getting into the top-most directory and typing

  rgrep xyz

you would get something like this:

  ./subdir1/file1
  136: this line has xyz in it
  210: this line also has xyz in it

  ./subdir2/subsubdir4/file2
  12: this line has xyz in it

I believe the "grep -l" causes the "./subdir/file1" to be printed and the
"grep -n" causes the line numbers to be printed.  The "echo", of course,
gives you a blank line separation in case the string exists in more than
one file.

If you want to limit your searches to specific file extensions, you could
replace the "\( -name '*.*' \)" with something like

  \( -name '*.[chCH]' -o -name '*.ec' -o -name '*.txt' \)

which means only files with a ".c", ".h", ".C", ".H", ".ec", or ".txt" 
extension will be searched.

Enjoy! 

Robert
(Thanks Dana Cavasso, author!)