text searching - xgbn/handbook GitHub Wiki

Find phrase in directory

grep -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"
-r or -R is recursive,
-n is line number, and
-w stands match the whole word.
-l (lower-case L) can be added to just give the file name of matching files.

Along with these, --exclude or --include parameter could be used for efficient searching. Something like below: grep --include=\*.{c,h} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern" This will only search through the files which have .c or .h extensions. Similarly a sample use of --exclude:

grep --exclude=*.o -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern" Above will exclude searching all the files ending with .o extension. Just like exclude file it's possible to exclude/include directories through --exclude-dir and --include-dir parameter; for example, the following shows how to integrate --exclude-dir:

grep --exclude-dir={dir1,dir2,*.dst} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern" This works very well for me, to achieve almost the same purpose like yours.

For more options :

man grep

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16956810/finding-all-files-containing-a-text-string-on-linux