CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxgrepfindfull-text-search
shenkwen
shenkwen

Reputation: 3880

"grep -rnw": search for a string in all files

Related question: How do I find all files containing specific text on Linux?

I have been using the command mentioned in the answer of above question to search for string occurences in all files:

grep -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

However lately I encountered a problem, shown in the following picture: enter image description here

Looks like this command only recognizes strings that stand out as a word or something. How should I modify the command to improve my search result?

Upvotes: 44

Views: 138228

Answers (1)

that other guy
that other guy

Reputation: 123650

explainshell helpfully explains your command, and gives an excerpt from man grep:

   -w, --word-regexp
          Select  only  those  lines  containing matches that form whole words.

So just remove -w since that explicitly does what you don't want:

grep -rn '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

Upvotes: 67

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