Line1: .................
Line2: #hello1 #hello2 #hello3
Line3: .................
Line4: .................
Line5: #hello1 #hello4 #hello3
Line6: #hello1 #hello2 #hello3
Line7: .................
I have files that look similar in terms of lines on one of my project directories. I want to get the counts of all the lines that contain #hello1 and #hello2. In this case I would get 2 as a result only for this file. However, I want to do this recursively.
The canonical way to "do something recursively" is to use the find command. If you want to find lines that have two words on them, a simple regex will do:
grep -lr '#hello1.*#hello2' .
The option -l instructs grep to show us only filenames rather than file content, and the option -r tells grep to traverse the filesystem recursively. The start of the search is the path at the end of the line. Once you have the list of files, you can parse that list using commands run by xargs.
For example, this will count all the lines in files matching the pattern you specified.
grep -lr '#hello1.*#hello2' . | xargs -n 1 wc -l
This uses xargs to run the wc command on each of the files listed by grep. You could probably also run this without the -n 1, unless you're dealing with many many thousands of files that would exceed your maximum command line length.
Or, if I'm interpreting your question correctly, the following will count just the patterns in those files.
grep -lr '#hello1.*#hello2' . | xargs -n 1 grep -Hc '#hello1.*#hello2'
This runs a similar grep to the one used to generate your recursive list of files, and presents the output with filename (-H) and count (-c).
But if you want complex rules like finding two patterns possibly on different lines in the file, then grep probably is not the optimal tool, unless you use multiple greps launched by find:
find /path/to/base -type f \
-exec grep -q '#hello1' {} \; \
-exec grep -q '#hello2' {} \; \
-print
(Lines split for easier reading.)
This is somewhat costly, as find needs to launch up to two children for each file. So another approach would be to use awk instead:
find /path/to/base -type f \
-exec awk '/#hello1/{c++} /#hello2/{c++} c==2{r=1} END{exit 1-r}' {} \; \
-print
Alternately, if your shell is bash version 4 or above, you can avoid using find and use the bash option globstar:
$ shopt -s globstar
$ awk 'FNR=1{c=0} /#hello1/{c++} /#hello2/{c++} c==2{print FILENAME;nextfile}' **/*
Note: none of this is tested.
If you are not nterested in the number of files also,
then just something along:
find $BASEDIRECTORY -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -h PATTERN | wc -l
If you want to count lines containing #hello1 and #hello2 separated by space in a specific file you can:
$ grep -c '#hello1 #hello2' file
If you want to count in more than one file:
$ grep -c '#hello1 #hello2' file1 file2 ...
And if you want to get the gran total:
$ grep -c '#hello1 #hello2' file1 file2 ... | paste -s -d+ - | bc
of course you can let your shell expanding file names. So, for example:
$ grep -c '#hello1 #hello2' *.txt | paste -s -d+ - | bc
or so...
find . -type f | xargs -1 awk '/#hello1/ && /#hello2/{c++} END{print FILENAME, c+0}'
Can I use ls | grep -c /full/path/to/file to count the occurrences of a file, but while executing the command from a different directory than where the files I'm looking for are?
Let's say I want to look how many .txt files I have in my "results" directory. Can I do something like ls | grep -c /full/path/to/results/*.txt while I'm in another directory?
Although I have .txt files in that directory, I always get a zero when I run the command from another directory :( What's happening? Can I only use ls for the current directory?
You have to use ls <dirname>. Plain ls defaults only to the current directory.
What you are trying to do can be accomplished by find <dir> -name "*.txt" | grep -c txt or find <dir> -name "*.txt" | wc -l
But you can do ls * | grep \.txt$ as well. Please read the manual to find the differences.
grep accepts regular expressions, not glob. /foo/bar/*.txt is a glob. Try /foo/bar/.*\.txt
also ls lists files and directories under your current directory. It will not list the full path. Do some tests, and you will see it easily.
ls may output results in a single line, and this could make your grep -c give an incorrect result. Because grep does line-based matching.
I want to count the amount of files in the directory I am currently in (including hidden files). So far I have this:
ls -1a | wc -l
but I believe this returns 2 more than what I want because it also counts "." (current directory) and ".." (directory above this one) as files. How would I go about returning the correct amount of files?
I believe to count all files / directories / hidden file you can also use BASH array like this:
shopt -s nullglob dotglob
cd /whatever/path
arr=( * )
count="${#arr[#]}"
This also works with filenames that contain space or newlines.
Edit:
ls piped to wc is not the right tool for that job. This is because filenames in UNIX can contain newlines as well. This would lead to counting them multiple times.
Following #gniourf_gniourf's comment (thanks!) the following command will handle newlines in file names correctly and should be used:
find -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -printf x | wc -c
The find command lists files in the current directory - including hidden files, excluding the . and .. because of -mindepth 1. It works non-recursively because of -maxdepth 1.
The -printf x action simply prints an x for each file in the directory which leads to an output like this:
xxxxxxxx
Piped to wc -c (-c means counting characters) you get your final result.
Former Answer:
Use the following command:
ls -1A | wc -l
-a will include all files or directories starting with a dot, but -A will exclude the current folder . and the parent folder ..
I suggest to follow man ls
You almost got it right:
ls -1A | wc -l
If you filenames contain new-lines or other funny characters do:
find -type f -ls | wc -l
How do I recursively view a list of files that has one string and specifically doesn't have another string? Also, I mean to evaluate the text of the files, not the filenames.
Conclusion:
As per comments, I ended up using:
find . -name "*.html" -exec grep -lR 'base\-maps' {} \; | xargs grep -L 'base\-maps\-bot'
This returned files with "base-maps" and not "base-maps-bot". Thank you!!
Try this:
grep -rl <string-to-match> | xargs grep -L <string-not-to-match>
Explanation: grep -lr makes grep recursively (r) output a list (l) of all files that contain <string-to-match>. xargs loops over these files, calling grep -L on each one of them. grep -L will only output the filename when the file does not contain <string-not-to-match>.
The use of xargs in the answers above is not necessary; you can achieve the same thing like this:
find . -type f -exec grep -q <string-to-match> {} \; -not -exec grep -q <string-not-to-match> {} \; -print
grep -q means run quietly but return an exit code indicating whether a match was found; find can then use that exit code to determine whether to keep executing the rest of its options. If -exec grep -q <string-to-match> {} \; returns 0, then it will go on to execute -not -exec grep -q <string-not-to-match>{} \;. If that also returns 0, it will go on to execute -print, which prints the name of the file.
As another answer has noted, using find in this way has major advantages over grep -Rl where you only want to search files of a certain type. If, on the other hand, you really want to search all files, grep -Rl is probably quicker, as it uses one grep process to perform the first filter for all files, instead of a separate grep process for each file.
These answers seem off as the match BOTH strings. The following command should work better:
grep -l <string-to-match> * | xargs grep -c <string-not-to-match> | grep '\:0'
Here is a more generic construction:
find . -name <nameFilter> -print0 | xargs -0 grep -Z -l <patternYes> | xargs -0 grep -L <patternNo>
This command outputs files whose name matches <nameFilter> (adjust find predicates as you need) which contain <patternYes>, but do not contain <patternNo>.
The enhancements are:
It works with filenames containing whitespace.
It lets you filter files by name.
If you don't need to filter by name (one often wants to consider all the files in current directory), you can strip find and add -R to the first grep:
grep -R -Z -l <patternYes> | xargs -0 grep -L <patternNo>
find . -maxdepth 1 -name "*.py" -exec grep -L "string-not-to-match" {} \;
This Command will get all ".py" files that don't contain "string-not-to-match" at same directory.
To match string A and exclude strings B & C being present in the same line I use, and quotes to allow search string to contain a space
grep -r <string A> | grep -v -e <string B> -e "<string C>" | awk -F ':' '{print $1}'
Explanation: grep -r recursively filters all lines matching in output format
filename: line
To exclude (grep -v) from those lines the ones that also contain either -e string B or -e string C. awk is used to print only the first field (the filename) using the colon as fieldseparator -F
How do I recursively grep all directories and subdirectories?
find . | xargs grep "texthere" *
grep -r "texthere" .
The first parameter represents the regular expression to search for, while the second one represents the directory that should be searched. In this case, . means the current directory.
Note: This works for GNU grep, and on some platforms like Solaris you must specifically use GNU grep as opposed to legacy implementation. For Solaris this is the ggrep command.
If you know the extension or pattern of the file you would like, another method is to use --include option:
grep -r --include "*.txt" texthere .
You can also mention files to exclude with --exclude.
Ag
If you frequently search through code, Ag (The Silver Searcher) is a much faster alternative to grep, that's customized for searching code. For instance, it's recursive by default and automatically ignores files and directories listed in .gitignore, so you don't have to keep passing the same cumbersome exclude options to grep or find.
I now always use (even on Windows with GoW -- Gnu on Windows):
grep --include="*.xxx" -nRHI "my Text to grep" *
(As noted by kronen in the comments, you can add 2>/dev/null to void permission denied outputs)
That includes the following options:
--include=PATTERN
Recurse in directories only searching file matching PATTERN.
-n, --line-number
Prefix each line of output with the line number within its input file.
(Note: phuclv adds in the comments that -n decreases performance a lot so, so you might want to skip that option)
-R, -r, --recursive
Read all files under each directory, recursively; this is equivalent to the -d recurse option.
-H, --with-filename
Print the filename for each match.
-I
Process a binary file as if it did not contain matching data;
this is equivalent to the --binary-files=without-match option.
And I can add 'i' (-nRHIi), if I want case-insensitive results.
I can get:
/home/vonc/gitpoc/passenger/gitlist/github #grep --include="*.php" -nRHI "hidden" *
src/GitList/Application.php:43: 'git.hidden' => $config->get('git', 'hidden') ? $config->get('git', 'hidden') : array(),
src/GitList/Provider/GitServiceProvider.php:21: $options['hidden'] = $app['git.hidden'];
tests/InterfaceTest.php:32: $options['hidden'] = array(self::$tmpdir . '/hiddenrepo');
vendor/klaussilveira/gitter/lib/Gitter/Client.php:20: protected $hidden;
vendor/klaussilveira/gitter/lib/Gitter/Client.php:170: * Get hidden repository list
vendor/klaussilveira/gitter/lib/Gitter/Client.php:176: return $this->hidden;
...
Also:
find ./ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep "foo"
but grep -r is a better answer.
globbing **
Using grep -r works, but it may overkill, especially in large folders.
For more practical usage, here is the syntax which uses globbing syntax (**):
grep "texthere" **/*.txt
which greps only specific files with pattern selected pattern. It works for supported shells such as Bash +4 or zsh.
To activate this feature, run: shopt -s globstar.
See also: How do I find all files containing specific text on Linux?
git grep
For projects under Git version control, use:
git grep "pattern"
which is much quicker.
ripgrep
For larger projects, the quickest grepping tool is ripgrep which greps files recursively by default:
rg "pattern" .
It's built on top of Rust's regex engine which uses finite automata, SIMD and aggressive literal optimizations to make searching very fast. Check the detailed analysis here.
In POSIX systems, you don't find -r parameter for grep and your grep -rn "stuff" . won't run, but if you use find command it will:
find . -type f -exec grep -n "stuff" {} \; -print
Agreed by Solaris and HP-UX.
If you only want to follow actual directories, and not symbolic links,
grep -r "thingToBeFound" directory
If you want to follow symbolic links as well as actual directories (be careful of infinite recursion),
grep -R "thing to be found" directory
Since you're trying to grep recursively, the following options may also be useful to you:
-H: outputs the filename with the line
-n: outputs the line number in the file
So if you want to find all files containing Darth Vader in the current directory or any subdirectories and capture the filename and line number, but do not want the recursion to follow symbolic links, the command would be
grep -rnH "Darth Vader" .
If you want to find all mentions of the word cat in the directory
/home/adam/Desktop/TomAndJerry
and you're currently in the directory
/home/adam/Desktop/WorldDominationPlot
and you want to capture the filename but not the line number of any instance of the string "cats", and you want the recursion to follow symbolic links if it finds them, you could run either of the following
grep -RH "cats" ../TomAndJerry #relative directory
grep -RH "cats" /home/adam/Desktop/TomAndJerry #absolute directory
Source:
running "grep --help"
A short introduction to symbolic links, for anyone reading this answer and confused by my reference to them:
https://www.nixtutor.com/freebsd/understanding-symbolic-links/
To find name of files with path recursively containing the particular string use below command
for UNIX:
find . | xargs grep "searched-string"
for Linux:
grep -r "searched-string" .
find a file on UNIX server
find . -type f -name file_name
find a file on LINUX server
find . -name file_name
just the filenames can be useful too
grep -r -l "foo" .
another syntax to grep a string in all files on a Linux system recursively
grep -irn "string"
the -r indicates a recursive search that searches for the specified string in the given directory and sub directory looking for the specified string in files, program, etc
-i ingnore case sensitive can be used to add inverted case string
-n prints the line number of the specified string
NB: this prints massive result to the console so you might need to filter the output by piping and remove less interesting bits of info it also searches binary programs so you might want to filter some of the results
ag is my favorite way to do this now github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher . It's basically the same thing as ack but with a few more optimizations.
Here's a short benchmark. I clear the cache before each test (cf https://askubuntu.com/questions/155768/how-do-i-clean-or-disable-the-memory-cache )
ryan#3G08$ sync && echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
3
ryan#3G08$ time grep -r "hey ya" .
real 0m9.458s
user 0m0.368s
sys 0m3.788s
ryan#3G08:$ sync && echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
3
ryan#3G08$ time ack-grep "hey ya" .
real 0m6.296s
user 0m0.716s
sys 0m1.056s
ryan#3G08$ sync && echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
3
ryan#3G08$ time ag "hey ya" .
real 0m5.641s
user 0m0.356s
sys 0m3.444s
ryan#3G08$ time ag "hey ya" . #test without first clearing cache
real 0m0.154s
user 0m0.224s
sys 0m0.172s
This should work:
grep -R "texthere" *
If you are looking for a specific content in all files from a directory structure, you may use find since it is more clear what you are doing:
find -type f -exec grep -l "texthere" {} +
Note that -l (downcase of L) shows the name of the file that contains the text. Remove it if you instead want to print the match itself. Or use -H to get the file together with the match. All together, other alternatives are:
find -type f -exec grep -Hn "texthere" {} +
Where -n prints the line number.
This is the one that worked for my case on my current machine (git bash on windows 7):
find ./ -type f -iname "*.cs" -print0 | xargs -0 grep "content pattern"
I always forget the -print0 and -0 for paths with spaces.
EDIT: My preferred tool is now instead ripgrep: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/releases . It's really fast and has better defaults (like recursive by default). Same example as my original answer but using ripgrep: rg -g "*.cs" "content pattern"
grep -r "texthere" . (notice period at the end)
(^credit: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1987928/1438029)
Clarification:
grep -r "texthere" / (recursively grep all directories and subdirectories)
grep -r "texthere" . (recursively grep these directories and subdirectories)
grep recursive
grep [options] PATTERN [FILE...]
[options]
-R, -r, --recursive
Read all files under each directory, recursively.
This is equivalent to the -d recurse or --directories=recurse option.
http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/grep1.html
grep help
$ grep --help
$ grep --help |grep recursive
-r, --recursive like --directories=recurse
-R, --dereference-recursive
Alternatives
ack (http://beyondgrep.com/)
ag (http://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher)
Throwing my two cents here. As others already mentioned grep -r doesn't work on every platform. This may sound silly but I always use git.
git grep "texthere"
Even if the directory is not staged, I just stage it and use git grep.
Below are the command for search a String recursively on Unix and Linux environment.
for UNIX command is:
find . -name "string to be searched" -exec grep "text" "{}" \;
for Linux command is:
grep -r "string to be searched" .
In 2018, you want to use ripgrep or the-silver-searcher because they are way faster than the alternatives.
Here is a directory with 336 first-level subdirectories:
% find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | wc -l
336
% time rg -w aggs -g '*.py'
...
rg -w aggs -g '*.py' 1.24s user 2.23s system 283% cpu 1.222 total
% time ag -w aggs -G '.*py$'
...
ag -w aggs -G '.*py$' 2.71s user 1.55s system 116% cpu 3.651 total
% time find ./ -type f -name '*.py' | xargs grep -w aggs
...
find ./ -type f -name '*.py' 1.34s user 5.68s system 32% cpu 21.329 total
xargs grep -w aggs 6.65s user 0.49s system 32% cpu 22.164 total
On OSX, this installs ripgrep: brew install ripgrep. This installs silver-searcher: brew install the_silver_searcher.
In my IBM AIX Server (OS version: AIX 5.2), use:
find ./ -type f -print -exec grep -n -i "stringYouWannaFind" {} \;
this will print out path/file name and relative line number in the file like:
./inc/xxxx_x.h
2865: /** Description : stringYouWannaFind */
anyway,it works for me : )
For a list of available flags:
grep --help
Returns all matches for the regexp texthere in the current directory, with the corresponding line number:
grep -rn "texthere" .
Returns all matches for texthere, starting at the root directory, with the corresponding line number and ignoring case:
grep -rni "texthere" /
flags used here:
-r recursive
-n print line number with output
-i ignore case
Note that find . -type f | xargs grep whatever sorts of solutions will run into "Argument list to long" errors when there are too many files matched by find.
The best bet is grep -r but if that isn't available, use find . -type f -exec grep -H whatever {} \; instead.
I guess this is what you're trying to write
grep myText $(find .)
and this may be something else helpful if you want to find the files grep hit
grep myText $(find .) | cut -d : -f 1 | sort | uniq
For .gz files, recursively scan all files and directories
Change file type or put *
find . -name \*.gz -print0 | xargs -0 zgrep "STRING"
Just for fun, a quick and dirty search of *.txt files if the #christangrant answer is too much to type :-)
grep -r texthere .|grep .txt
Here's a recursive (tested lightly with bash and sh) function that traverses all subfolders of a given folder ($1) and using grep searches for given string ($3) in given files ($2):
$ cat script.sh
#!/bin/sh
cd "$1"
loop () {
for i in *
do
if [ -d "$i" ]
then
# echo entering "$i"
cd "$i"
loop "$1" "$2"
fi
done
if [ -f "$1" ]
then
grep -l "$2" "$PWD/$1"
fi
cd ..
}
loop "$2" "$3"
Running it and an example output:
$ sh script start_folder filename search_string
/home/james/start_folder/dir2/filename
Get the first matched files from grep command and get all the files don't contain some word, but input files for second grep comes from result files of first grep command.
grep -l -r --include "*.js" "FIRSTWORD" * | xargs grep "SECONDwORD"
grep -l -r --include "*.js" "FIRSTWORD" * | xargs grep -L "SECONDwORD"
dc0fd654-37df-4420-8ba5-6046a9dbe406
grep -l -r --include "*.js" "SEARCHWORD" * | awk -F'/' '{print $NF}' | xargs -I{} sh -c 'echo {}; grep -l -r --include "*.html" -w --include=*.js -e {} *; echo '''
5319778a-cec2-444d-bcc4-53d33821fedb