printing matching lines when greping all files in a directory

Question

I'm searching within Java files for some occurrence of a phrase:

find . -name '*.java' | xargs grep -l 'string'

How do I change this command to print to the shell all of the lines which contain a match?

Answer 1

find . -name '*.java' | xargs grep 'string'

find . -name '*.java' | xargs grep -H 'string' # if you want filenames too

Answer 2

grep -HR "string" *.java

Answer 3

Try using ack, available at betterthangrep.com

ack string --java

Answer 4

If your filenames contain space, ' or " you should look at GNU Parallel www.gnu.org/software/parallel/

find . -name '*.java' | parallel grep 'string'

Depending on your system this may run faster than the sequential grep as this can use multiple CPUs. Often, though, the speed of the disk will be the limiting factor.

Watch the intro video to GNU Parallel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpaiGYxkSuQ