Searching for text in a file

[Susan W Roden]

How do I search from root login for a specific word located in a file. I don't have any idea what file or what directory. I think it has something to do with the STRINGS command but I'm not sure.

[Rick Garland]

If this is a text file, you can use grep. Various options are available in using grep, check the man page.

grep -l filename

Here it will output the names of the file that contain the pattern you are looking for. Again, check the man pages for the options you might want to use.

[Daniel Correa]

You coud use the find command to a directory or the whole system depending on where you start. You could use;

find / -type f -exec grep -il {search_string} {} \;

This will give you the file names where the string appears. You can then use grep if a textfile, or strings if a binary, to look at each file

[David Rodman]

If it is a binary file then strings can help.
You may want to combine the methods discussed try:
strings /etc/uname | grep license
it gets every occurance of the string "license"
Add in find and you can search the disk.