Recursively search a directory tree for all .php .inc .html .htm .css .js files for a certain string

find -type f -regex ".*\.$js\|php\|inc\|htm[l]?\|css$$" -exec grep -il 'searchstring' '{}' +

By: tuxilicious

2010-02-07 23:41:00

find grep find grep search

1 Alternatives + Submit Alt

Recursively search a directory tree for all .php .inc .html .htm .css .js files for a certain string

Use find to recursively make a list of all files from the current directory and downwards. The files have to have an extension of the ones listed. Then for every file found, grep it for 'searchString', returns the filename if searchString is found. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
./index.html
./lib/php/buttons.php
```
-1

find . -type f $ -name "*.js" -o -name "*.php" -o -name "*.inc" -o -name "*.html" -o -name "*.htm" -o -name "*.css" $ -exec grep -il 'searchString' {} \;

niels_bom · 2010-02-07 15:28:20 4

What Others Think

using -exec grep ... will spawn a new grep process for each file. Better to use xargs: find -type f -regex ".*\.$js\|php\|inc\|htm[l]?\|css$$" | xargs grep -il 'searchstring' This creates only a single grep process. Much more efficient. Note that there *is* a reason to use -exec: you can use the return value of the individual executable calls as part of the logic for find.

bartonski · 779 weeks and 6 days ago

Exactly for this reason I used "-exec command +" instead of -exec command \;". Quote from find manual: "This variant of the -exec action runs the specified command on the selected files, but the command line is built by appending each selected file name at the end; the total number of invocations of the command will be much less than the number of matched files. The command line is built in much the same way that xargs builds its command lines. ;)

tuxilicious · 779 weeks and 4 days ago

rahimhh21 · 124 weeks and 3 days ago

Perfecthomepugs · 115 weeks and 5 days ago

pugpuppies95 · 77 weeks and 6 days ago

yeneba6574 · 32 weeks and 6 days ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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