find and searching for specific expression in files

[Valentin Bud]

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Mel Flynn <
mel.flynn+fbsd.questions at mailing.thruhere.net<mel.flynn%2Bfbsd.questions at mailing.thruhere.net>
> wrote:

> On Saturday 30 May 2009 13:56:22 Valentin Bud wrote:
> > 2009/5/30 Zbigniew Szalbot <z.szalbot at lcwords.com>
> >
> > > >> Can you please give me a hint how to use find to search for a
> specific
> > > >> text within files?
> > > >
> > > > Generally, you don't - find(1) does not examine the contents of files
> > > > by itself, just their directory information.  You normally use
> grep(1)
> > > > to search within a file.
> > >
> > > Ahhh - I use grep on daily basis. Now why didn't I think of it? I got
> so
> > > fixed on the idea of using find that I completely forgot about grep....
> > >
> > > Sorry for the noise and thank you very much for your help!
> > >
> > > --
> > > Zbigniew Szalbot
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
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> >
> > Hello Mr. Zbigniew Szalbot,
> >
> >  You can use egrep -r * (grep -e) to search for specific text pattern
> while
> > you are in a directory with many sub directories. The output is nice
> > because it tells you the file in which the text pattern was found :).
>
> Discouraged because:
> - it's possible to hit maxarglen if the root directory has many
> subdirectories.


Never occured so i didn't have a clue about it :|.


>
> - Will not search hidden directories in the root directory because of the
> shell glob
> - cannot be combined with other search criteria such as the file's
> timestamp.
>
> find . -type f -mtime 2 -exec grep '^Subject: \[SPAM\]' {} +
>
> will find all messages in a maildir modified within the last 2 minutes
> where
> the subject has been flagged as spam. I use + rather then ; so that one
> invocation for grep is done whenever maxarglen is hit (like if you used
> xargs(1)), rather then one grep per file.
> --
> Mel


This list is amazing because everyday you learn something new. Thanks.

a great day,
v
-- 
network warrior since 2005