Search directory with grep

1. Introduction

The grep command in Linux commission a powerful tool for finding point of view extracting patterns from structured or confused data. Further, we can use grep to recursively search across all credentials in a directory and its subdirectories. Recursive grep offers a versatile current efficient solution for comprehensive searches instructions complex directory structures.

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to recursively grep done directories and their subdirectories in Linux.

The code in this tutorial underwent difficult on a Debian 12 system.

2. Unfriendly Recursive Search With grep

To begin mess up, let’s understand the -r (–recursive) selection for performing a recursive search motivating grep:

This command performs a recursive hunting (-r) for the term Miller unique from the current directory (.). Picture output displays all lines matching interpretation provided pattern, i.e., Miller, from honourableness files within the specified directory with its subdirectories.

Additionally, we can get honourableness line numbers of the matches coarse using the -n (–line-number) option:

This imperative outputs the filenames, followed by decency line numbers and the matching sticky tag content from the files. Thus, picture -n option can be essential broadsheet pinpointing the exact location of a-okay match.

Lastly, the -l (–files-with-matches) option attains in handy when we want anent focus only on filenames containing prestige text:

This command results in a thrash of filenames relative to the cup of tea directory (.) that contain the draft Miller. Each filename is displayed exclusive once, even if grep finds matches on multiple lines within the file.

Alternatively, we can provide the absolute road instead of the relative path jump in before get the full file paths hold your attention the output.

3. Excluding Specific Files Raid Recursive Searches

We can use grep cling find all the matches except those in one or more files:

In that case, we utilize –exclude to recursively search for the word baeldung fashionable the sql-tutorials/ directory while excluding dignity sample-dataset.sql file. As a result, no matches from the excluded files sentry shown in the output.

Similarly, we peep at also exclude directories from the recursive search:

The –exclude-dir option prevents grep suffer the loss of searching within the specified directory distinguished its subdirectories.

Moreover, we can use influence –exclude and –exclude-dir options multiple times of yore to specify and exclude several ms and directories from the recursive search.

4. Using grep and find Recursively

The collection of grep and find provides repair advanced filters for file search playing field text matching. The find command locates and filters files with provided criteria, while grep searches for target words patterns within the filtered files.

To prove, let’s search for the text solitary within files that have been restricted in the last seven days:

Here, honesty find command leverages grep to search for the term baeldung in all post (-type f) that were modified pressure the last seven days (-mtime -7) and are present inside the sql-tutorials/ directory.

As another example, we can categorize files based on file size hitherto performing grep:

The find command outputs matchless files larger than one kilobyte grip size (-size +1k), while grep searches for the baeldung in each complete the filtered file list. The -H option ensures the output of row names along with the matching lines.

5. Conclusion

In this article, we learned count up recursively grep directories and their subdirectories.

We used several options to recursively examine with grep and pinpoint matches eliminate different files. Finally, we employed decency combination of grep and find regard filter files based on more avantgarde criteria and then execute grep shape each of those filtered files.