Finding all files containing a text string on Linux

Finding all files containing a text string on Linux

grep -rnw '/path/to/docs/' -e "pattern"

• -r or -R is recursive,
• -n is line number, and
• -w stands match the whole word.
• -l (lower-case L) can be added to just give the file name of matching files.
• Along with these, --exclude or --include parameter could be used for efficient searching.

Recursive grep for words in a particular file type

The most portable and efficient recommendation is:

find / -type f -name '*.sh' -exec grep -l word {} + /dev/null

Definition

grep is a Unix command used to search files for the occurrence of a string of characters that matches a specified pattern.