How can I use grep to find a word inside a folder?

Question

In Windows, I would have done a search for finding a word inside a folder. Similarly, I want to know if a specific word occurs inside a directory containing many sub-directo

Answer 1

Similar to the answer posted by @eLRuLL, a easier way to specify a search that respects word boundaries is to use the -w option:

grep -wnr "yourString" .

Answer 2

Why not do a recursive search to find all instances in sub directories:

grep -r 'text' *

This works like a charm.

Answer 3

grep -nr 'yourString*' .

The dot at the end searches the current directory. Meaning for each parameter:

-n            Show relative line number in the file
'yourString*' String for search, followed by a wildcard character
-r            Recursively search subdirectories listed
.             Directory for search (current directory)

grep -nr 'MobileAppSer*' . (Would find MobileAppServlet.java or MobileAppServlet.class or MobileAppServlet.txt; 'MobileAppASer*.*' is another way to do the same thing.)

To check more parameters use man grep command.

Answer 4

1. grep -r "yourstring" * Will find "yourstring" in any files and folders

Now if you want to look for two different strings at the same time you can always use option E and add words for the search. example after the break

2. grep -rE "yourstring|yourotherstring|$" * will search for list locations where yourstring or yourotherstring matches

Answer 5

Don't use grep. Download Silver Searcher or ripgrep. They're both outstanding, and way faster than grep or ack with tons of options.

Answer 6

The following sample looks recursively for your search string in the *.xml and *.js files located somewhere inside the folders path1, path2 and path3.

grep -r --include=*.xml --include=*.js "your search string" path1 path2 path3

So you can search in a subset of the files for many directories, just providing the paths at the end.