Recursive search for files that hold some specific text

Question

How do I recursively generate a text file which has a list of all files on my server which contain a specific string anywhere in the files?

I know the following command can be used to replace a string recursively

find /var/www -type f -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i 's/old string/new string/g'

I do not want to replace the string, I just want a list of all files which contain the string.

Answer 1

Use grep instead of sed:

find /var/www -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -i 'old string'

From the way you phrase the question, it seems like you're not yet too familiar with grep. Read more about its options in its man page type: man grep at your command line.

update to answer comment -- try adding the -l option to show just file names. The -i makes the search case insensitive. The easy to use both is with a single dash: grep -il

Answer 2

You can also use grep alone without find:

grep -Rli 'old string' /var/www > list_of_files

Answer 3

You could try adding the -l flag to the command to only list the file names

find /var/www -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -li 'old string'

Answer 4

Try ack -- it's faster than grep and supports perl regex.

ack -la <pattern> /var/www

On some systems this package is called "ack" and sometimes its called "ack-grep".