How I can make the grep command locate certain words in the files specified by the routes found by the locate command?
locate my.cnf | grep user
(I want that grep command search the word "user" on the files found for locate command)
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You might have a read through When is xargs needed? for some explanations of what's going on here with arguments vs. pipes.Caleb– Caleb2012-09-11 22:49:05 +00:00Commented Sep 11, 2012 at 22:49
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3 Answers
If your search results are sure to return paths with no spaces, you could use xargs like this:
locate my.cnf | xargs grep user
However you should get in the habit of protecting yourself to handle the case where a path or filename might contain a space by telling xargs to use null as a separator and telling locate (or whatever program you are using to return strings) to also send that as the separator like this:
locate -0 my.cnf | xargs -0 grep user
This would work even if your path included blanks like /name with space/my.cnf.
answered Sep 10, 2012 at 15:52
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Slightly more idiomatic than mine.nikitautiu– nikitautiu2012-09-10 15:55:35 +00:00Commented Sep 10, 2012 at 15:55
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You might want
locate my.cnf | xargs grep -H userso that the output lines report which file(s) the match was found in.StarNamer– StarNamer2012-09-10 23:20:54 +00:00Commented Sep 10, 2012 at 23:20 -
i'd use
locate -0 my.cnf | xargs -0 -r grep userin case any filenames had spaces etc in them. Note that not all versions oflocatesupport the-0or--nulloption for null-terminated output.mlocatedoes. IIRC, GNU locate does too.cas– cas2012-09-11 00:50:11 +00:00Commented Sep 11, 2012 at 0:50 -
@vitiv: It's not slightly more idomatic, yours just doesn't work. Try it. Even when you fix it, then you have to add even more fixes to handle paths with spaces. By the time it actually works, yours will be the more idomatic, although in a more complex setup it could also be the better choice.Caleb– Caleb2012-09-11 22:47:46 +00:00Commented Sep 11, 2012 at 22:47
If I understand correctly, you could do something like this:
#!/bin/sh
typeset what1=$1
typeset what2=$2
[ "$#" -eq 2 ] || { echo "Two arguments expected"; exit 1; }
locate ${what1} | while read file; do
grep ${what2} ${file} /dev/null
done
This searches the files matching the locate argument (what1) for a string that matches what2. The dev/null argument forces grep to report the file name of a match.
answered Sep 10, 2012 at 15:52
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Interesting hack by adding
/dev/null, although you can also echo the file name yourself.Caleb– Caleb2012-09-11 22:50:39 +00:00Commented Sep 11, 2012 at 22:50 -
@Caleb : Yes I could have added an
echo ${file}but I dislike having to spawn yet another process just for that purpose.JRFerguson– JRFerguson2012-09-11 23:03:14 +00:00Commented Sep 11, 2012 at 23:03 -
There is typically a shell builtin for
echoso it does not spawn a process anyway.Caleb– Caleb2012-09-11 23:26:13 +00:00Commented Sep 11, 2012 at 23:26 -
@Caleb : Ah, yes, I forgot that. Thanks!JRFerguson– JRFerguson2012-09-11 23:27:37 +00:00Commented Sep 11, 2012 at 23:27
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1Actually the real problem is the gymnastics of getting it to do the echo before the match only if there is a match. It can be done but it's kind of ugly. Usually I don't want the matches at all however so it's
grep -q "#what2" && [other action]. As I said, that is an interesting hack however and I'll remember it, may come in handy although I tend to dislike things that their function isn't readily apparent to somebody reading the code.Caleb– Caleb2012-09-11 23:31:28 +00:00Commented Sep 11, 2012 at 23:31
One-liner:
for file in $(locate my.cnf) ; do grep -r user "$file" ; done
If you want to search pattern in files under the directory name you got from locate then -r will take care of it otherwise remove -r.
answered Sep 10, 2012 at 21:08
