find Argument list too long

Question

I want to search in many many files for a string.

I used find /archive/* -print0 | xargs -0 grep 'robert' -sl

Is there a simple method to do it ?

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Answer 1 · 2011-05-12 08:54:26Z

up vote 5 down vote

The shell expands *. Just omit it, and find will figure out what to do.

find /archive -print0 | xargs -0 grep 'robert' -sl

answered May 12 '11 at 8:54

wooow :D:D thx it works – Roby May 12 '11 at 8:55

2

+1 have a read up on how "globs" work. It's really useful to know. – James C May 12 '11 at 8:56

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Timofey Stolbov · Answer 2 · 2011-05-12 09:02:02Z

up vote 0 down vote

There is no need for find. Just use.

grep -m 1 -rsl 'robert' archive/

answered May 12 '11 at 9:02

	ok, is there any way say, if zou found 100 files its ok and print them out and stop searching more ? – Roby May 12 '11 at 9:22
	@Roby `grep -rsl 'robert' archive/ \| head -100` – Timofey Stolbov May 12 '11 at 9:28
	@Timofey: is grep then stopping ? because i had really large files.... like 2mio. – Roby May 12 '11 at 9:30
	@Roby Yes of course. – Timofey Stolbov May 12 '11 at 9:35
	@Roby: `grep -rslm 100 'robert' archive/` – grawity May 12 '11 at 14:16

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migrated from stackoverflow.com May 12 '11 at 11:38