grep recursive

[Pete Randall]

Francesco,

You can still assign JRF the points he deserves. Click on the "reopen thread" button, then assign the points, then click on the "close thread" button.


Pete

[IT_2007]

Francesco,

Thread is not closed. Please assign points to JRF. He deserves it.

Thanks,
IT_2007

[Francesco_13]

Hi,
ok, before weekend was be problematic connect with forum. This morning it's ok! assigned points.
we can close the thread.
thanks to all
regards.
Francesco

[Francesco_13]

Hi,
when i run the script from / of my hp-ux, after several minutes i receive this error:
/usr/bin/grep: The parameter list is too long.
I don´t know where have stopped.

i use:
grep -i force `find / -exec file {} \; | grep -v directory | grep -v executable | awk -F':' '
{print $1}'`

How i can remove this problem?

Thanks.

Best regards.

Francesco

[Francesco_13]

Hi,

for the other option with:
#!/usr/bin/sh
typeset DIR=$1
typeset PAT=$2
find ${DIR} -xdev -type f | while read FILE
do
[ `file ${FILE} | grep -ic ascii` -eq 0 ] && continue
grep "$PAT" ${FILE} /dev/null
done
exit

I have introduced -i option for uppercase. But one question: how i can do it for find only word "force" and no returning me other words how for example "forced" where force it's present?

Thanks.

Best regards.
Francesco

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Francesco:

A simple 'grep' will match the string of characters without regard to where they occur. A simple solution for finding only the word "force" would be:

# grep -i -e "^force " -e " force$" -e " force "

The caret (^) anchors the string to the beginning of a line. The dollar sign ($) anchors the string at the line's end. Surrounding the string with spaaces " " creates the sense of an English word.

In answer to your question regarding Peter's script, the "parameter list is too long" error arises because the 'find' is creating a list of files for input the 'grep'. The list generated is too long to be passed to 'grep' in one unit.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Dennis Handly]

>grep -i force `find / -exec file {} \; | grep -v directory | grep -v executable | awk -F':' '
{print $1}'`

Peter's script is not the proper way to use find, if it will return an infinite number of files. You must use xargs or better yet use -exec grep +.

It seems you can only use -exec file +. But you shouldn't use `find ...`.

You need to replace by:

find / -exec file + | \
grep -v -e directory -e executable | \
awk -F":" '{print $1}' | xargs -n40 grep -i force

You may want to add 2> /dev/null to the find and the last grep.

>how i can do it for find only word "force" and no returning me other words how for example "forced" where force it's present?

You need to use grep -w. (If you are on 11.11) This is easier than James' solution. Otherwise a more rigorous solution for 11.00 would use

[[:space:][:punct:]] where he has a blank, before and after your word "force".