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#Find any file in linux windows
Join the nixCraft community via RSS Feed, Email Newsletter or follow on Twitter.Finding files and directories in Linux is a very difficult task compared to Windows operating system. He wrote more than 7k+ posts and helped numerous readers to master IT topics. Vivek Gite is the founder of nixCraft, the oldest running blog about Linux and open source.
#Find any file in linux manual
Read the following manual pages using the man command or grep command: -l – Show the name of each input file when match found.search only those lines containing matches that form whole words -s – Suppress error messages about nonexistent or unreadable files.-n – Display line number of each matched line.Follow all symbolic links, unlike -r grep option -R – Read all files under each directory, recursively.In this example search for lines starting with any lowercase or uppercase letter: Finding text strings within files using grep
#Find any file in linux how to
You learned how to search and find a file containing a particular text string (words) under Linux using the grep command. $ egrep 'word1|word2' -rnw /home/vivek/backups/ Summing up $ grep -i -r 'income tax' ~/accounting/ How do I find all files containing specific text on Linux? Our final example ignore case distinctions in both the search PATTERN and the input files: Pass the -color option to the grep command display matched text/words in color on the terminal:įig.01: grep command in action with colors and hiding the warnings on screen Task: Ignore case $ grep -w -R 'getMyData()' ~/projects/ 2>/dev/null Task: Display matched text in color This will send and hide unwanted output to /dev/null device: To hide all errors or warning message spam generated by the grep command, append 2>/dev/null to grep command. Grep command generate error message as follows due to permission and other issues: $ egrep -w -R 'word1|word2' ~/projects/ Task: Hide warning spam $ grep -w -R 'getMyData()' ~/projects/ Task: Search for two or more words In this example, search for word ‘getMyData()’ only in ~/projects/ dirctory: You can select only those lines containing matches that form whole words using the -w option. $ grep -h -R 'main()' ~/projects/*.c Task: Display only words You can pass the -h option to suppress inclusion of the file names in the output: 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.
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To just display the filename use the cut command as follows: Sample outputs: filename.txt: redeem reward You can pass -H option to print the filename for each match: $ sudo grep -R "barfoo" /etc/ Task: Only display filenamesīy default, the grep command prints the matching lines. Hence, it is better to restrict the search to particular directory as per your needs: The above command may take a lot of time. In other words, use the following command to search for a word called “barfoo”: I want to search the whole Linux server for a string. Trying to find all files containing specific text on my Linux desktop Look for all files containing cacheRoot text on Linux: You can search for a text string all files under each directory, recursively with -r option: $ grep "redeem reward" ~/*.txt Task: Search all subdirectories recursively to find text in files Let us find text called “redeem reward” in files under Linux: In this example, search for a string called ‘redeem reward’ in all text (*.txt) files located in /home/tom/ directory, use: How to search and find all files for a given text string Let us see some common example on how to use grep to search for strings in files. Grep -r -H " text string to search" directory-pathĮgrep -R " word-1|word-2" /path/to/directoryĮgrep -w -R " word-1|word-2" directory-path Grep -r " text string to search" /directory-path Grep " text string to search" directory-path The Linux syntax to find string in files is as follows:
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Grep command syntax for finding a file containing a particular text string
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