searching content of files in the current and sub directories

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi
I was wondering why command 2 doesn't work like command 1 below.

find . -exec grep "test" '{}' \; -print

ls -R | grep "test"

I am trying to search "test" from all the files in the current and sub directories. What's wrong with my command 2?

Thanks in advance for your help

2

command 2 searches for filenames that have the string "test" as part of their name while command 1 searches for the string "test" inside each of the files.

ls -R | xargs grep "test"  #this makes command 2 like command 1
3

Hi shamrock
Thanks for your help

However the code you suggested
ls -R | xargs grep "test"

gives me a huge list with ending "No such file or directory".
i.e.
grep: expr.sh: No such file or direcotory

Is it possible to only display the directory and file name when the text that I am searching is found?

Thanks

4

try this :

find . | xargs grep -l "test"

5

Hi,

For the "No such file or directory", it is becuase there are error messages print to the stand output, you can ignore them by adding

2>/dev/null

at the end of the command,which will stop printing all the error message to stand output which is our screen.