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Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 14:46:57 -0800
From: Matthew Hunt <mph@astro.caltech.edu>
To: Francisco Reyes <lists@natserv.com>
Message-ID: <20031113224657.GA66502@wopr.caltech.edu>
References: <20031113173505.F84157@zoraida.natserv.net>
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cc: FreeBSD Questions List <questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: Recursion with grep?
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On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 05:37:39PM -0500, Francisco Reyes wrote:

> The man page for grep says to use "-r" to recurse, yet when I try
> something like
> 
> grep -r -li string *.c
> 
> I get no files. However, if I go into one of the subdirectories and do a
> plain grep <string> *.c then <string> is found on several files.

When using "-r", the arguments to grep should be directories.  It will
process all of the files in the given directories, recursively.  There is
no provision for searching a subset of the files (i.e. "*.c).  If you
need to do that, use find and xargs.

-- 
Matthew Hunt <mph@astro.caltech.edu> * UNIX is a lever for the
http://www.pobox.com/~mph/           * intellect. -J.R. Mashey