Do the following:
grep -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"
-
-r
or-R
is recursive, -
-n
is line number, and -
-w
stands match the whole word. -
-l
(lower-case L) can be added to just give the file name of matching files. - Along with these,
--exclude
or--include
parameter could be used for efficient searching. Something like below:
grep --include=\*.{c,h} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"
This will only search through the files which have .c or .h extensions. Similarly a sample use of --exclude
:
grep --exclude=*.o -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"
Above will exclude searching all the files ending with .o extension. Just like exclude file it's possible to exclude/include directories through --exclude-dir
and --include-dir
parameter; for example, the following shows how to integrate --exclude-dir
:
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 :
man grep