How do I find all files containing specific text on Linux

Question

I'm trying to find a way to scan my entire Linux system for all the files containing a specific string of text. Just to clarify, I wanted a text within the file, not in the file name.

When I was looking up how to do this :

find / -type f -exec grep -H 'text-to-find-here' {} \;

However, it is working. It display every single file in the system.

Is this close to the proper way to do it? If not, how should I? This ability to find text strings in files would be useful for some programming concepts.

Answer 1

To display all files containing specific text, you need to fire some commands to get output. lets see which would be helpful.

You can use “grep” command to search string in files. Alternatively, You can also also use the "find " command to display files with specific string.

Syntax is:

grep -rwl “search-string” /path/to/serch/dir

Lets See examples,

grep -rlw "tecadmin" /var/log

/var/log/lfd.log
/var/log/cloud-init.log
/var/log/messages-20170226
/var/log/audit/audit.log.1
/var/log/btmp-20170315
/var/log/httpd/access_log-20170226

Hope this answer help you.

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Thanks.

Answer 2

grep -rnw 'text to find recursively inside all file in current directory-by ritesh '   

grep -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/ritesh' -e 'text to find recursively inside all file '

Comments

What does -rnw stand for? What are those flags?

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Hi @Ritesh.

What path should I give if I want to find the text in the whole file system?