How can I find all files in a folder with a certain text string and an extension?

Question

I don't know a great deal about commands.

I am using OS X.

I need to find files in a directory with the .php extension and the string 41 somewhere in the file's contents.

I tried using grep.

grep -R 41 *.php

This however only seemed to find files in the cwd and not in sub directories.

I also tried messing with find.

I wasn't able to figure this out.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Answer 1 · 2011-05-31 06:55:28Z

up vote 4 down vote accepted

You need both.

find . -name '*.php' -type f -exec grep -q 41 {} \; -print

answered May 31 '11 at 6:55

	+1 Ignacio. Is it possible for it show the excerpt of the file where it found the substring, like `grep` normally does? Thanks. – alex May 31 '11 at 6:59
	Sure. Just remove `-q` and the `-print` predicate. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams May 31 '11 at 7:00
	Thank you. I really need to learn more about these things... – alex May 31 '11 at 7:01
	As you do, you'll learn why `find . -name '*.php' -type f -print0 \| xargs -0 fgrep 41 --` is the next thing that people will suggest to you. – JdeBP May 31 '11 at 8:37
	No need for `xargs`; BSD find understands `-exec ... +`. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams May 31 '11 at 8:38

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Andy Lester · Answer 2 · 2011-06-09 13:57:26Z

up vote 0 down vote

If you use ack you can do ack 41 --php.

answered Jun 9 '11 at 13:57

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2 Answers