How can I find all files that do NOT contain a text string?

Question

What concise command can I use to find all files that do NOT contain a text string?

I tried this (using -v to invert grep's parameters) with no luck:

find . -exec grep -v -l shared.php {} \;

Someone said this would work:

find . ! -exec grep -l shared.php {} \;

But it does not seem to work for me.

This page has this example:

find ./logs -size +1c  > t._tmp
while read filename
do
     grep -q "Process Complete" $filename
     if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
             echo $filename
     fi
done < t._tmp
rm -f t_tmp

But that's cumbersome and not at all concise.

ps: I know that grep -L * will do this, but how can I use the find command in combination with grep to excluded files is what I really want to know.

pss: Also I'm not sure how to have grep include subdirectories with the grep -L * syntax, but I still want to know how to use it with find :)

Answer 1

Your find should work if you change -v -l (files that have any line not matching) to -L (files with no lines matching), but you could also use grep's recursive (-r) option:

grep -rL shared.php .

Answer 2

find . -type f | xargs grep -H -c 'shared.php' | grep 0$ | cut -d':' -f1    

OR

find . -type f -exec grep -H -c 'shared.php' {} \; | grep 0$ | cut -d':' -f1

Here we are calculating number of matching lines(using -c) in a file if the count is 0 then its the required file, so we cut the first column i.e. filename from the output.

Answer 3

I know that grep -L * will do this, but how can I use the find command in combination with grep to exclude files is what I really want to know

You could use find and grep like this:

find . -type f ! -exec grep -q 'PATTERN' {} \; -print

Here -print is executed only if the previous expression: ! -exec ... {} evaluates as true.
So for each file found, grep -q 'PATTERN' is executed, if the result is false then the entire expression ! -exec grep -q 'PATTERN' evaluates as true and the file name is printed.

Answer 4

You find not matching result by option -L

grep -iL shared.php .

Answer 5

I think you are looking for a command like

find . -type f -execdir grep -q -v shared.php {} \; -print

The option -q makes grep quit and after using -execdir you need -print to print found files.