How to find files containing specific text in Linux?
Asked by Sumit Talwar · · 4034 views
I'm trying to figure out how to scan my whole Linux system for all files containing a particular string of text.
This ability to discover text strings in files would be very helpful for some programming projects I'm working on.
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2 Answers
You can use grep -ilR
:
grep -Ril "text-to-find-here" /directory-path
-
i
stands for ignore case (optional in your case). -
R
stands for recursive. -
l
stands for "show the file name, not the result itself".
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You can use grep
command for finding a file containing a particular text string.
The syntax is:
grep [option] "text string to search" directory-path
Examples:
1. Search Single String in All Files
grep -rlw "text string to search" /var/log
2. Search Multiple String in All Files
grep -rlw -e "string1" -e "string2" /var/log
3. Search String in Specific Files
grep -rlw --include="*.log" -e "text string to search" /var/log
4. Exclude Some Files from Search
grep -rlw "text string to search" /var/log
grep -rlw -e "string1" -e "string2" /var/log
grep -rlw --include="*.log" -e "text string to search" /var/log
You can exclude some files using –exclude
option in command. For example, do not search file ending with .txt
extension.
grep -rlw --exclude="*.txt" -e "text string to search" /var/log
5. Exclude Some Directories from Search
You can also exclude some directoires to skip search inside it. For example, do not search string files inside any folder having directory-name
in their name.
grep -rlw --exclude-dir="*directory-name*" -e "text string to search" /var/log
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