find test within files

[Josh803]

sorry if this is in the wrong spot, but I want to search all the files in a directory for a piece of text...thanks for any help you guys can give me

[elija]

try this

grep -R test ~

Which will search (grep) your home directory (~) and all subdirectories (-R) for
the text test

[Josh803]

I guess I forgot to say, but I'm using MINIX and -R is not an opinion within Minix, is there any other way to do this with -R?

[i92guboj]

I guess I forgot to say, but I'm using MINIX and -R is not an opinion within Minix, is there any other way to do this with -R?

If "find" is available, you can do it this way:

find . -exec  grep foo '{}' \;

This will find all the files starting on the current dir (.) and then grep each of those files searching for the string "foo".

[Josh803]

thanks guys for all your help and it all most works, but now when I run that command it gives me the message "grep: couldn't open"...any suggestions?

[i92guboj]

thanks guys for all your help and it all most works, but now when I run that command it gives me the message "grep: couldn't open"...any suggestions?

Does that happen with all the files? Do you have read permissions ver these files? If affirmative, can you post the exact error messages?

It should work as long as the find and grep tools are standard, I think. Though I don't have any experience with minix, to tell the truth.

Also, are these regular files or are they any other kind of files? (symlinks, sockets, device nodes and the like).

[netstrider]

I don't know if this works in Minix, but I believe it should. Check if grep is there..

which grep

that way we can take the problem further if grep proves to be available, else check if grep is available for Minix.

PS: Output should be something like this:

uholtz@atom:~$ which grep
/bin/grep

[Josh803]

I do have read and write permission on all the files and "grep: couldn't open" is the exact message I get, and it displays it for every file in the directory. grep is also installed(/usr/bin/grep) and all the files are .h or .c files so I think I should be able to read from them

[i92guboj]

I do have read and write permission on all the files and "grep: couldn't open" is the exact message I get, and it displays it for every file in the directory. grep is also installed(/usr/bin/grep) and all the files are .h or .c files so I think I should be able to read from them

Does it do anything if you use another command? For example:

find . -exec  ls -l '{}' \;

[Josh803]

I don't know what it is, but that didn't work either. it just gave me a message "ls: (); No such file or directory"...I thought I could use the grep command and some how pip the find command with it but so far have been unsuccessful