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How to find all files containing specific text (string) on Linux?

Published at June 6th, 2013
See Orignial Question

The Problem

How do I find all files containing a specific string of text within their file contents?

The following doesn't work. It seems to display every single file in the system.

find / -type f -exec grep -H 'text-to-find-here' {} \;
linuxdirectorygreptextfind

Best Answer By AI

Answer by chatgpt
To find all files containing a specific text (string) on Linux, you can use the `grep` command. Here's the syntax for using `grep` to search for a specific text in files: 
grep -r "specific_text" directory_path
Explanation: - `grep`: The command-line utility for searching plain-text data sets for lines that match a given pattern. - `-r`: Recursive search. This option allows `grep` to search for the specific text in all files and subdirectories. - `"specific_text"`: Replace this with the text you want to search for. Make sure to enclose the text in double quotes if it contains spaces. - `directory_path`: Specify the directory path where you want to search for the specific text. You can use a dot (`.`) to search in the current directory. Example: Let's say we want to search for the text "example" in all files inside the `/home/user/documents/` directory. Here's how the command would look: 
grep -r "example" /home/user/documents/
This command would search for "example" in all files and subdirectories inside the `/home/user/documents/` directory. Note: Depending on your system configuration, you might need to use `sudo` before the `grep` command to search in protected directories.
ChatGPT

Answered, September 11th, 2023

Top Answers From StackOverflow

  • 13308

    Do the following:

    grep -Rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e 'pattern'
    • -r or -R is recursive ; use -R to search entirely
    • -n is line number, and
    • -w stands for match the whole word.
    • -l (lower-case L) can be added to just give the file name of matching files.
    • -e is the pattern used during the search

    Along with these, --exclude, --include, --exclude-dir flags could be used for efficient searching:

    • This will only search through those files which have .c or .h extensions:

      grep --include=\*.{c,h} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

    • This will exclude searching all the files ending with .o extension:

      grep --exclude=\*.o -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

    • For directories it's possible to exclude one or more directories using the --exclude-dir parameter. For example, this will exclude the dirs dir1/, dir2/ and all of them matching *.dst/:

      grep --exclude-dir={dir1,dir2,*.dst} -rnw '/path/to/search/' -e "pattern"

    This works very well for me, to achieve almost the same purpose like yours.

    For more options, see man grep.

    rakib_

    Answered, June 6th, 2013

  • 2237

    Use grep -ilR:

    grep -Ril "text-to-find-here" /
    • i stands for ignore case (optional in your case).
    • R stands for recursive.
    • l stands for "show the file name, not the result itself".
    • / stands for starting at the root of your machine.
    fedorqui

    Answered, June 6th, 2013

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