Linux – How to Recursively Grep All Directories and Subdirectories

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How do I recursively grep all directories and subdirectories?

find . | xargs grep "texthere" *

Best Answer

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.

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grep -R --include="*.c" --exclude-dir={DEF} writeFile /path/to/XYZ

-R means recursive, so it will go into subdirectories of the directory you're grepping through
--include="*.c" means "look for files ending in .c"
--exclude-dir={DEF} means "exclude directories named DEF. If you want to exclude multiple directories, do this: --exclude-dir={DEF,GBA,XYZ}
writeFile is the pattern you're grepping for
/path/to/XYZ is the path to the directory you want to grep through.

Note that these flags apply to GNU grep, might be different if you're using BSD/SysV/AIX grep. If you're using Linux/GNU grep utils you should be fine.

Best Answer

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