Libre à moi

Using grep to search in files

I’m moving away from eclipse and more and more into the wonderfull (and cold) world of the command line.

So I need to search for file that contain something in the current directory and its subdirectories all the time

grep -R "something I'm searching for" .

Grep is the way. And with some colors it’s still nicer

grep -R --color "something I'm searching for" .

Now what if I only want files that end with .py that’s a little more subtle

grep -R "something" $(find . -name "*.py")

Now if you want still better you can go for ack which is a grep like tool, only better

ack "something" .

Yeah you don’t have to type the -R it’s the default, also the executable is called ack-grep under debian/ubuntu.

Don’t feel like typing the . that says you’re searching in the current directory ? Add that to your .bashrc

g() {

  if [ $# = 1 ]

  then ack -i $1 .

  else ack -i $@

  fi

}

Now you can search in the current directory with a simple

g something

Don’t forget to replace ack by ack-grep under debian/ubuntu.