Find all files with specific extensions that contains a string

Question

I'd like to know how could I find all files whose extension can be .xml and .py that contain the string "Jason" under a path "./" recursively?

Or how could I exclude .po from the search?

Answer 1

You can do it with grep only (without using find):

grep --include=\*.{xml,py} -Rl ./ -e "Jason"

And to exclude .po:

grep --exclude=*.po --include=\*.{xml,py} -Rl ./ -e "Jason"

Answer 2

Try the following command. It will search only in the .xml and .py files for your name:

find . -type f \( -iname \*.xml -o -iname \*.py \) | xargs grep "Jason"

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

This can be done with combining find and grep. Here is a small demo - I have test directory with 6 txt and rtf files, two of which contain string "Jason".

CURRENT DIR:[/home/xieerqi/testdir]
$ find . -type f \( -iname "*.txt" -o -iname "*.rtf" \) -exec grep -iR 'jason' {} +                                        
./foo1.txt:Jason
./bar1.txt:Jason

CURRENT DIR:[/home/xieerqi/testdir]
$ ls                                                                                                                       
bar1.rtf  bar1.txt  bar2.rtf  bar2.txt  foo1.rtf  foo1.txt  foo2.rtf  foo2.txt

CURRENT DIR:[/home/xieerqi/testdir]
$ find . -type f \( -iname "*.txt" -o -iname "*.rtf" \) -exec grep -iR 'jason' {} +                                        
./foo1.txt:Jason
./bar1.txt:Jason

We find all the files with txt and rtf extensions here and give them all as parameters to grep. The . means search in current directory, but you could specify another path and find will descend into that directory and subdirectories, to search recursively.

Replacing extensions with yours, the final answer is

find . -type f \( -iname "*.xml" -o -iname "*.py" \) -exec grep -iR 'jason' {} + 

Answer 4

You could do this:

grep -r "Jason" ./ | grep .xml; grep -r "Jason" ./ | grep .py

That will display the output of any files containing Jason and limit it to filenames containing .xml or .py.

If you want to just exclude .po, then try this:

grep -r "Jason" | grep -v .po

Answer 5

How I understand from your question above, u need to show all files with "Jason" string into. So, may be this can help you:

find . -type f \( -name "*.xml" -o -name "*.py" \) | grep -r "Jason" | cut -d':' -f1 | uniq

Answer 6

The best solution probably has been given already by nobody, however when the tool doesn't support searching a directory recursively for filenames one can enable the globstar option of bash and perform a recursive globbing:

shopt -s globstar; grep -F -l Jason **/*.{xml,py}

user@user-X550CL:~/tmp$ tree -a
.
└── dir1
    └── dir
        ├── containing_Jason.py
        ├── containing_Jason.txt
        ├── containing_Jason.xml
        ├── not_containing_Jason.py
        ├── not_containing_Jason.txt
        └── not_containing_Jason.xml

2 directories, 6 files
user@user-X550CL:~/tmp$ shopt -s globstar
user@user-X550CL:~/tmp$ grep -F -l Jason **/*.{xml,py}
dir1/dir/containing_Jason.xml
dir1/dir/containing_Jason.py

The equivalent feature in zsh is enabled by default:

grep -F -l Jason **/*.{xml,py}

user@user-X550CL ~/tmp % tree -a                       
.
└── dir1
    └── dir
        ├── containing_Jason.py
        ├── containing_Jason.txt
        ├── containing_Jason.xml
        ├── not_containing_Jason.py
        ├── not_containing_Jason.txt
        └── not_containing_Jason.xml

2 directories, 6 files
user@user-X550CL ~/tmp % grep -F -l Jason **/*.{xml,py}
dir1/dir/containing_Jason.xml
dir1/dir/containing_Jason.py