Quick findstring recursively in dirs (Alias from long find with xargs cmd)

Why not just:

alias findstring="find . -type f -iname "*$1*"

??

I don't know, you tell me ..

Your command didn't work on my box, no output.

Its just using the name of the file pattern matching that find does, rather than piping it out to use grep for the same purpose. I would assume its more system efficient.

It won't output anything, if there is no file to match.

It's not for filenames, it's for searching for strings inside files.

some implementations of grep won't output the filename if it's searching a single file, and sometimes xargs passes single filenames to grep. So, either add -n2 to the xargs call or -H to the grep call.

!!Critical Error!!

functions and shell scripts can use "$1" - aliases should *NOT*

to expose the bug, you would have to set a static positional

parameter when you invoke bash...

Also, you need to use the `-print0 | -0` construct -

the completely correct version would be:

Oh yeah.

Ok, so if its to grep files, then why not something like:

@DaveQB: yes, your last command does the same thing, but there's still a good purpose for having this alias.

On some older implementations of grep, the -r (recursive) option is not implemented (Older HP-UX for example).

Upvoted cause I found myself in need for this command a couple times

Fair enough

asmoore82: Thanks alot for your correction, I also discovered when playing some more with aliases that you could not use $1 and what I had done was only because I had the perception that it would work for aliases and so it did until I tried with 2 parameters and found out I was wrong all along.

Will you please explain the `-print0 | -0` construct ?

And what about the bash command thing you talked about earlier in your comment, does it enable using $1 like in scripts?

@dezza

the -print0 and -0 combo between find|xargs says that all filenames (that is, strings) passed out of find are null-terminated (via -print0) and xargs expects the input strings to be null terminated (via -0). This covers the case when filenames have spaces. You could also use the multi-argument -exec option of find so I think the command would be:

Although instead of an alias you could us a bash function which does support arguments, although you have to be a little careful about quoting. I have a command in my bashrc for grepping many files:

use the --include option to restrict the search to .c files or whatever. In bash 4.0 and zsh (and possibly in other shells) there is the ** globbing syntax which means "at any depth" so potentially you could accomplish what you are trying to do with:

@asmoore82

find . -type f -exec grep -H "searchy bandit" {} \;

I think you should put the search string after grep, your way doesn't work for me, it thinks your search argument is the filename.

If I use your grepfiles function like:

grepfiles STRING2FIND *

It only returns one result, not all containing "STRING2FIND"

Which --include option are you talking about? I don't see --include in grep --help ..

[dezza@dezza test]$ function findstring () { grep -H "$1" **/"$2" }

>

This happens when I try to assign the function, have to terminate with CTRL+C

I now tried with bash 4.0 and readline 6.0 and this is what happens:

[dezza@dezza ~]$ findstring stylesheet *.php

grep: **/something.php: No such file or directory

[dezza@dezza ~]$

in .bashrc

function findstring() { grep -H "$1" **/"$2"; }

If I try with

function findstring() { grep -H "$1" "$2"; }

It finishes instantly and doesn't find anything.

If I try with

function findstring () { grep -H "$1" **/"$2" }

bash: /home/dezza/.bashrc: line 12: syntax error: unexpected end of file

bash-4.0$