Unix Tip: FINDING A STRING

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UNIX HOT TIP

Unix Tip 3190 - October 31, 2009

http://www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/show?tip.today

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FINDING A STRING

How to find a string somewhere on the system. Many times we are called to search for a string, but we have no idea where it may be lurking. Judicious use of the find and grep commands will make you a hero with your co-workers.

# find . -type f -exec grep "string or options" /dev/null {} \;

Normally using only:
# find . -type f -exec grep "string/options" {} \;

Produces the target string, but you will have no clue as to where it is located, making this almost as frustrating as using windoze! Remember when grep'ing against multiple files the filename will be listed before the match.

$ grep there *
foo:I found the target here
bar:You are there

In our find command we use /dev/null as a file to search against, since we know the search will always fail if the string is found in "{}" there filename is printed. To borrow from a famous quote: "Pretty tricky sis!"

This tip generously supported by: james_b_horwath@glic.com

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