How to search srings in OS?

[lin.chen]

hello all,
I want to find a file with strings "hello" in it.
how can I do?use find command?thanks

[Paul Sperry · Accepted solution]

cd /
find . -print | xargs grep -i hello

[Paul Sperry]

or just

cd /dir
grep -i hello *

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom lin.chen,

find / -exec grep -l "hello" {} \;

find options

SEP

[Peter Godron]

Hi,
Please read:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=629412

The -type f restrict to files only, rather than for example directories etc.

Note: This can take a while to run and return some strange results, like searching binaries etc.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

As noted, you don't want to search directories, and you don't want to search binary files. Youc can use this approach though:

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

...run the script passing the directory ($1) that you want to search and the pattern ($2) you want to find. For example:

./google /etc/rc.config.d ROUTE

Regards!

...JRF...

[Frank de Vries]

I always use this for me:

passing grep to find in back quotes ` `

grep -n "hello" `find /full/path/* -type f -print`

where n is the line number.

If argument list is too long,
then loop by directory.

Let me know if you want to know how.

[lin.chen]

if I do not want to search in /tmp.
how can I do

[Patrick Wallek]

If you don't want to search /tmp, don't specify it in your find command.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Lin:

You can specify multiple directories to search when you use 'find':

# find /usr /var /opt -xdev -type f -print

The use of '-xdev' prevents 'find' from traversing mountpoints. This is most useful if you want to search the root directory ('/') but *not* mountpoints like '/usr', '/var' etc.

Regards!

...JRF...