![]() ![]() ![]() Today you learned how to find all the files with a specific text on Linux. When facing a difficult pattern-matching task, you will most likely have to use Google no matter how good a grep user you are. A more efficient way to use grep is by watching a beginner guide, playing with some examples, and knowing that such a tool exists. Notice that reading this manual from start to end will most likely make no sense because you’ll probably use the program only once in a while. For instance, you can find a description and some options you can run the program with. You can find the full manual pages of grep by running man grep in Terminal. Grep shows the results in the terminal window after the command. Grep is a program that can read any type of text and open any type of file.įor example, you can use grep to find files with particular names, and text content, and more. To run grep, you need to use the Terminal by running grep followed by the specifications of the pattern you’re trying to match. You can find grep on Linux as well as on Mac and BSD. To put it short, grep is a Unix program for pattern matching. In the above examples, you learned how to find text in files using Terminal with a grep command.īut if you have no background in Linux and pattern matching, you might wonder what that grep thing even is. This command rigorously inspects all the files and folders behind ‘/path/to/search/’ except for the folders example1 and example2. To limit the search to only files with specific extensions, you can specify the –include flag in the grep call.įor example, let’s only include files with extensions. In the following sections, you learn how to restrict the search to specific file types and how to exclude folders/files from the search. These files can be of a specific type or live behind a particular directory.īeing able to exclude specific file types or directories from the search can make your job so much easier. ![]() More often than not, your folders may contain files with millions of rows of text you want to exclude from the search. In the previous section, you learned how to use grep to find all the files behind a path that matches a piece of text. Now the result is blank because there’s no word “Thanks” in the file2.txt.Īre you lost with file paths? Make sure to check this quick guide to understanding file paths and relative paths within computers. Let’s run grep -rnw ‘file2.txt’ -e ‘Thanks’ in the Terminal to restrict the search to the file2.txt only: (If you were on the Desktop folder, the path would be “example/file2.txt”). When looking from inside the Desktop/example folder, the path to the file2.txt is just “file2.txt”. For example, let’s check if the word “ Thanks” exists in the file2.txt. To restrict the search to a particular file, you can provide a path to the file. This is because you specified the path to be ‘.’ which refers to the entire Desktop/example folder you’re in right now. ![]() Notice that the above example scanned through the entire folder Desktop/example, that is, all the files file1, file2, and file3. If there are no files with the word you’re searching for, the command will run without an output. In this case, it’s the third file, file3.txt, that has the word “ Thanks” in it. (‘.’ refers to the path of the folder you are in)Īs a result, you can see the file path, row number, and the context where it says the word “ Thanks“. Change the directory to the folder on the desktop (for example, cd Desktop/example).Now, let’s use grep to find in which file there’s a word “Thanks”. ![]()
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