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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Linux grep command to search for text in sub directories/folders

How to use grep command to search for a word in Sub Directories

grep command is used to search for a word or character steam in files. We can use grep to search for multiple files with in a given directory by using below command

grep 'search-term' *

Where * will be replaced by each file in a given directory by your Shell.

But is it possible to search with in subdirectories as well?
Yes, we can do that by using grep -r(for recoursely) and -l (for listing files) as shown below.

grep -rl "searchterm" foldername

Example: I want to search for 'abc' in all the files in present working directory as well as sub directories, I used below command.

grep -rl for .


./.chphome
./.bash_history
./.viminfo
./scripts/profilefind.sh
./scripts/temp2/firstfor.sh
./scripts/temp2/secondfor.sh
./scripts/forandtest.sh
./moveprof.sh
./perlscripts/moveprof.sh
./perlscripts/chomptest.pl
./perlscripts/wout1.pl

hope this helps when search sub directories.

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