Searching within files for "*"

[Dave Walley]

Hi.

I have to search through a large directory for all occurences of a string i.e. DAVE and from these I must exclude where there is an asterisk in column 7. i have used the following and am not getting the right answer.

find . -name "*.fil"|xargs grep -l DAVE|xargs grep -l "DAVE *"

The problem I believe is because I am looking for an asterisk in pos 7.

Any clues?.

Thanking you in advance.

Dave

[John Palmer]

Try:-

find . -name "*.fil" -exec grep -l "^DAVE \*" \;

That is a backspace before the asterisk in the grep string and a backspace before the ;

Regards

John

[John Palmer]

Sorry Dave, I misread your original request.
To get a list of files that contain the string "DAVE" but do not have a record with an * in column 7 try:-

find . -name "*.fil" -exec grep -l DAVE {} ;| xargs grep -l "......\*";

Regards,

John

[Kofi ARTHIABAH]

I believe for the EXCLUDE, you want the -v switch for the grep

find....(blah blah)... grep -l -v "^......\*"

remember the ^

[Dave Walley]

Many thanks for your reply.

My problem requires me to only select files initially with DAVE and excluding those with 'DAVE *'.

I managed to get the right answer with the following script but I hoped someone may had had a more efficient way.

find /dirname -name "*.fil"|xargs fgrep -i DAVE | fgrep -iv
"DAVE *"|cut -d/ -f6|cut -d: -f1|sort -u

The fgrep has less functionality I believe but it accepts and * for an *

Thanks once again.

Dave

[John Palmer · Accepted solution]

Dave,

Providing the lines always start DAVE and have at least 7 characters (ie none just DAVE) then you could get the find command to do most of the work:-

find /dirname -name "*.fil" -exec grep -l "^DAVE..[^\*]" {} \; | cut...

Here grep will select files that have a line which starts DAVE

Hope this helps...

[Wessel Baptist]

Try this one:

find / -name "*DAVE*.fil" | grep -v "DAVE*"

Success

[Wessel Baptist]

Sorry,
this one, whith a blackslash before the asterix in the grep part.

find . -name "*DAVE*.fil"|grep -v "DAVE\*"

[Wessel Baptist]

Try this one:

find / -name "*DAVE*.fil" | grep -v "DAVE*"

Success