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

Question

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?

Answer 1

You need both.

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

Answer 2

in order for grep to work recursively, the argument to grep needs to include the directories it's expected to recurse.

looking at the following files

shiny:t fl$ find .
.
./evenmore
./evenmore/foo.php
./evenmore/inhere.php
./evenmore/no41in.php
./foo.php
./inhere.php
./morestuff
./morestuff/foo.php
./morestuff/inhere.php
./morestuff/no41in.php
./no41in.php
./stuff
./stuff/no41in.php

this does not work:

shiny:t fl$ grep -r 41 *.php
foo.php:41
inhere.php:41

because after path name expansion is done, the shell has processed the asterisk and the command line is now

shiny:t fl$ set -x
shiny:t fl$ grep -r 41 *.php
+ grep -r 41 foo.php inhere.php no41in.php
foo.php:41
inhere.php:41

there is no directory to descend in in the argument handed to grep. This however will descend in all directories present:

shiny:t fl$ grep -r 41 .
./evenmore/foo.php:41
./evenmore/inhere.php:41
./foo.php:41
./inhere.php:41
./morestuff/foo.php:41
./morestuff/inhere.php:41

whether that also processes dot-directories is left as an exercise to the reader :-)

Answer 3

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

ack is like grep with built-in highlighting and line numbering and it's designed for searching source code.