[olug] Unix Tip: FINDING A STRING

[Unix Guru Universe]

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			      UNIX GURU UNIVERSE 
			         UNIX HOT TIP

			Unix Tip 2149 - November 19, 2002

		    http://www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/show?tip.today

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FINDING A STRING

How to find a string somewhere on the system.  Many times we are 
called to search for a string, but we have no idea where it may 
be lurking.  Judicious use of the find and grep commands will 
make you a hero with your co-workers. 

# find . -type f -exec grep "string or options" /dev/null {} \;

Normally using only:
# find . -type f -exec grep "string/options" {} \; 

Produces the target string, but you will have no clue as to where 
it is located, making this almost as frustrating as using windoze!  
Remember when grep'ing against multiple files the filename will be 
listed before the match.

$ grep there *
foo:I found the target here
bar:You are there

In our find command we use /dev/null as a file to search against, since 
we know the search will always fail if the string is found in "{}" there 
filename is printed.  To borrow from a famous quote:
"Pretty tricky sis!"

This tip generously supported by: james_b_horwath at glic.com


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