From owner-freebsd-questions  Wed Feb 20  3:34:30 2002
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Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 11:34:19 +0000
From: Matt H <freebsd-questions@cuntbubble.com>
To: "rene@xs4all.nl" <rene@xs4all.nl>
Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: how to search IN a bunch of files?
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On Wed, 20 Feb 2002 12:18:04 +0100
"rene@xs4all.nl" <rene@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Hello. I'd like to be able to search in all files on my freebsd system for a
> given regexp. Yes, I want to search the contents of the files specified. 
> 
> I can get find(1) to supply me with a list of valid paths, but am unsure
> how to grep within all these files. an example would be appreciated.
> 
> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
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> 

there's the -exec part of find

find / -exec grep "regex" {} \;


or if there's not too many results from find do :

grep "regex" `find /`


or print out some stuff as you go along 

find / | awk '{ print Grepping $0; cmd = sprintf "grep \"regex\" %s"; system(cmd)}'

(which might lead to some interesting escaping in the regex - depends on the regex)

etc. etc.

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