Unix Command to List files containing string but *NOT* containing another string

Question

How do I recursively view a list of files that has one string and specifically doesn\'t have another string? Also, I mean to evaluate the text of the files, not the filenames.

Answer 1

To match string A and exclude strings B & C being present in the same line I use, and quotes to allow search string to contain a space

grep -r  | grep -v -e  -e "" | awk -F ':' '{print $1}'

Explanation: grep -r recursively filters all lines matching in output format

filename: line

To exclude (grep -v) from those lines the ones that also contain either -e string B or -e string C. awk is used to print only the first field (the filename) using the colon as fieldseparator -F