Grep Recursive and Count

Question

Need to search a directories with lots of sub-directories for a string inside files:

I\'m using:

grep -c -r \"string here\" *

How can I

Answer 1

Some solution with AWK:

grep -r "string here" * | awk 'END { print NR } 1'

Next one is total count, number of files, and number of matches for each, displaying the first match of each one (to display all matches, change the condition to ++f[$1]):

grep -r "string here" * | 
    awk -F: 'END { print "\nmatches: ", NR, "files: ", length(f); 
                   for (i in f) print i, f[i] } !f[$1]++'

Output for the first solution (searching within a directory for "boost::". I manually cut some too long lines so they fit horizontally):

list_inserter.hpp:            return range( boost::begin(r), boost::end(r) );
list_of.hpp:            ::boost::is_array,
list_of.hpp:            ::boost::decay,
list_of.hpp:            ::boost::decay >::type type;
list_of.hpp:        return ::boost::iterator_range_detail::equal( l, r );
list_of.hpp:        return ::boost::iterator_range_detail::less_than( l, r );
list_of.hpp:        return ::boost::iterator_range_detail::less_than( l, r );
list_of.hpp:        return Os << ::boost::make_iterator_range( r.begin(), r.end() );
list_of.hpp:            return range( boost::begin(r), boost::end(r) );
list_of.hpp:            return range( boost::begin(r), boost::end(r) );
list_of.hpp:            return range( boost::begin(r), boost::end(r) );
ptr_list_of.hpp:                          BOOST_DEDUCED_TYPENAME boost::ptr_...
ptr_list_of.hpp:        typedef boost::ptr_vector       impl_type;
13

Output for the second one

list_inserter.hpp:            return range( boost::begin(r), boost::end(r) );
list_of.hpp:            ::boost::is_array,
ptr_list_of.hpp:                          BOOST_DEDUCED_TYPENAME boost::ptr_...

matches:  13 files:  3
ptr_list_of.hpp 2
list_of.hpp 10
list_inserter.hpp 1

Colors in the result are nice (--color=always for grep), but they break when piped through awk here. So better don't enable them then unless you want to have all your terminal colored afterwards :) Cheers!