Find All Files Matching 'Name' on Linux System, and Search with Them for 'Text'

Find all files matching 'name' on linux system, and search with them for 'text'

find / -type f -name filename.ext -exec grep -l 'lookingfor' {} +

Using a + to terminate the command is more efficient than \; because find sends a whole batch of files to grep instead of sending them one by one. This avoids a fork/exec for each single file which is found.

A while ago I did some testing to compare the performance of xargs vs {} + vs {} \; and I found that {} + was faster. Here are some of my results:

time find . -name "*20090430*" -exec touch {} +
real    0m31.98s
user    0m0.06s
sys     0m0.49s

time find . -name "*20090430*" | xargs touch
real    1m8.81s
user    0m0.13s
sys     0m1.07s

time find . -name "*20090430*" -exec touch {} \;
real    1m42.53s
user    0m0.17s
sys     0m2.42s

How to find all files containing specific text (string) on Linux

Do the following:

grep -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e 'pattern'

• -r or -R is recursive,
• -n is line number, and
• -w stands for match the whole word.
• -l (lower-case L) can be added to just give the file name of matching files.
• -e is the pattern used during the search

Along with these, --exclude, --include, --exclude-dir flags could be used for efficient searching:

• This will only search through those files which have .c or .h extensions:

grep --include=\*.{c,h} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

• This will exclude searching all the files ending with .o extension:

grep --exclude=\*.o -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

• For directories it's possible to exclude one or more directories using the --exclude-dir parameter. For example, this will exclude the dirs dir1/, dir2/ and all of them matching *.dst/:

grep --exclude-dir={dir1,dir2,*.dst} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

This works very well for me, to achieve almost the same purpose like yours.

For more options, see man grep.

Find all files with name containing string

Use find:

find . -maxdepth 1 -name "*string*" -print

It will find all files in the current directory (delete maxdepth 1 if you want it recursive) containing "string" and will print it on the screen.

If you want to avoid file containing ':', you can type:

find . -maxdepth 1 -name "*string*" ! -name "*:*" -print

If you want to use grep (but I think it's not necessary as far as you don't want to check file content) you can use:

ls | grep touch

But, I repeat, find is a better and cleaner solution for your task.

How to find all files containing specific text (string) on Linux

Do the following:

grep -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e 'pattern'

• -r or -R is recursive,
• -n is line number, and
• -w stands for match the whole word.
• -l (lower-case L) can be added to just give the file name of matching files.
• -e is the pattern used during the search

Along with these, --exclude, --include, --exclude-dir flags could be used for efficient searching:

• This will only search through those files which have .c or .h extensions:

grep --include=\*.{c,h} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

• This will exclude searching all the files ending with .o extension:

grep --exclude=\*.o -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

• For directories it's possible to exclude one or more directories using the --exclude-dir parameter. For example, this will exclude the dirs dir1/, dir2/ and all of them matching *.dst/:

grep --exclude-dir={dir1,dir2,*.dst} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

This works very well for me, to achieve almost the same purpose like yours.

For more options, see man grep.

Linux find file names with given string recursively

Use the find command,

find . -type f -name "*John*"

Find all files with a filename beginning with a specified string?

Use find with a wildcard:

find . -name 'mystring*'

How to search for a text in specific files in unix

It might be better to use find, since grep's include/exclude can get a bit confusing:

find -type f -name "*.xml" -exec grep -l 'hello' {} +

This looks for files whose name finishes with .xml and performs a grep 'hello' on them. With -l (L) we make the file name to be printed, without the matched line.

Explanation

• find -type f this finds files in the given directory structure.
• -name "*.xml" selects those files whose name finishes with .xml.
• -exec execute a command on every result of the find command.
• -exec grep -l 'hello' {} + execute grep -l 'hello' on the given file. With {} + we are refering to the matched name (it is like doing grep 'hello' file but refering to the name of the file provided by the find command). Also, grep -l (L) returns the file name, not the match itself.

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