using the CAT command recursively

[Si Veteran]

I need to search for a specific phrase in a bunch of files that are all in subfolders by month.

I know I can do a

cat * | grep <phrase>

in each folder but how would I run this from the top level and get it to look in all the folders? something to do with

ls -R

?

[RoboStac]

for f in `ls -R`; do cat "$f" | grep <phrase>; done

You'll have to ignore all the directory warnings, or add more filtering.

[Si Veteran]

for f in `ls -R`; do cat "$f" | grep <phrase>; done

You'll have to ignore all the directory warnings, or add more filtering.

That appears to get stuck :/

[kjordan2001]

cat `ls -R` | grep <phrase>

[Si Veteran]

cat: ls -R: No such file or directory

:(

[trpn]

wouldn't it just be

grep -r <phrase> top-level-dir

[MrStaticVoid]

cat: ls -R: No such file or directory

:(

Those are backticks around the ls -R. The backtick is above Tab.

[kjordan2001]

wouldn't it just be

grep -r <phrase> top-level-dir

Only problem with that is I think that might look inside text files too and find the phrase in that as well.

[Si Veteran]

Those are backticks around the ls -R. The backtick is above Tab.

:pinch:

Thanks! (Y)

[Tek]

find | grep <phrase>

The find command lists every file in every directory underneath the current dir.

[JelloSnake]

Yeah, Im going to have to agree with trpn, this is how you can search from the top directory down.

grep -r whatever *

I use that every day when I am looking for spammers or whatever in log files.