Use grep to find content in files and move them if they match

Question

I\'m using grep to generate a list of files I need to move:

grep -L -r \'Subject: \\[SPAM\\]\' .

How can I pass this list to the mv command

Answer 1

Work perfect fo me :

• move files who contain the text withe the word MYSTRINGTOSEARCH to directory MYDIR.

  find . -type f -exec grep -il 'MYSTRINGTOSEARCH' {} \; -exec mv {} MYDIR/ \;

I hope this helps

Answer 2

This is what helped me:

grep -lir 'spam' ./ | xargs mv -t ../spam

Of course, I was already in required folder (that's why ./) and moved them to neighboring folder. But you can change them to any paths.

I don't know why accepted answer didn't work. Also I didn't have spaces and special characters in filenames - maybe this will not work.

Stolen here: Grep command to find files containing text string and move them

Answer 3

mv `grep -L -r 'Subject: \[SPAM\]' .` <directory_path>

Assuming that the grep you wrote returns the files paths you're expecting.