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Re: grep recursive

 
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Francesco_13
Regular Advisor

grep recursive

Hi,

how i can find the word "force" in all text file of my hp-ux system?
grep -i force * find in executables file too..

thanks

Best regards.
Francesco
16 REPLIES 16
IT_2007
Honored Contributor

Re: grep recursive

you won't be able to find word from executables using grep command. you have to use strings first and then use grep command to find the words.
IT_2007
Honored Contributor

Re: grep recursive

like

strings /etc/lvmtab |grep "vg"

which will show you only names with vg.
Francesco_13
Regular Advisor

Re: grep recursive

Hi,
i wolud find recursively where i have the word 'force' in all my files in the system...

with you suggested command i can do it this?

thanks and regards
Pete Randall
Outstanding Contributor

Re: grep recursive

Use the find command in conjunction with grep:

find /start_dir -type f -exec grep -l "force" {} \;

Be warned, however, that binary files will do not grep well. Ideally you would need to find some way to exclude binaries, perhaps by being more selective about which directories you "find" in.


Pete

Pete
Francesco_13
Regular Advisor

Re: grep recursive

thanks to all.
Question solved.

regards.
Francesco
James R. Ferguson
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: grep recursive

Hi:

Using '-exec' with 'find' causes a separate process to be forked for every file found. This can be very detrimental to your system's performance.

Secondly, you should add '-xdev' so that you do not cross mountpoints as 'find' descends directories. This would be *very* important if you were interested in searching the root 'root' filesystem (including '/etc' which is not a separate mountpoint but excluding trees like '/usr' and '/opt' which are there own mountpoints.

Thus, at a minimum, do:

# find /path -xdev -type f | xargs grep -i force

Regards!

...JRF...
Peter Godron
Honored Contributor

Re: grep recursive

Francesco,
variation on a theme:
grep force `find / -exec file {} \; | grep -v directory | grep -v executable | awk -F':' '{print $1}'`

This should exclude directories and execuatble as defined by file (man file)

James R. Ferguson
Acclaimed Contributor
Solution

Re: grep recursive

Hi (again) Francesco:

[ It's taken an hour to be able to post this...the Forum has been out-to-lunch ]

If you want to be able to restrict your 'grep' to only text files ( and not binary ones ) and in addition identify each file matching the pattern you specify, use:

# cat ./google
#!/usr/bin/sh
typeset DIR=$1
typeset PAT=$2
find ${DIR} -xdev -type f | while read FILE
do
[ `file ${FILE} | grep -c ascii` -eq 0 ] && continue
grep "$PAT" ${FILE} /dev/null
done
exit 0

...run as:

# ./google /path pattern

for example:

# ./google /etc hostname

Regards!

...JRF...
Francesco_13
Regular Advisor

Re: grep recursive

Hi,
thanks to reply. Due a delay of forum i cannot submit points(the therad was closed..) ..i would 10 point for you!

Best regards.
Francesco