Find all files containing a specific text or pattern on Linux

Searching for a specific text or pattern across multiple files can be completed using grep.

Using grep to search file contents

grep provides searching functionality out-of-the-box:

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grep -rnw '/path/to/directory' -e 'pattern'

Here are a breakdown of the grep options:

• -r for recursiveness
• -n for line number
• -w for matching the whole word
• -e is the pattern used for searching

The command will output the file names and text containing the pattern. If the goal is simply to display the filenames themselves, add the -l flag.:

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grep -rlnw '/path/to/directory' -e 'pattern'

If binary files need to be omitted, add the -I flag.

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grep -rlnwI '/path/to/directory' -e 'pattern'

In addition, the --exclude, --include, and --exclude-dir may be used in combination.

Example: Excluding dir1 and dir2, find all html or javascript files with the filter of p in them.

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grep \
  --include=\*.{html,js} \
  --exclude-dir={dir1,dir2} \
  -rlnwI '/path/to/directory' \
  -e "p"