Korn and searching

[Jason Parker-Burlingham]

JJ Neff <jjneff at yahoo.com> writes:

> Can someone indicate the syntax for searching for a keyword in any file on
> aUnix box that uses Korn shell?
> 
> Im assuming it's some kind of 
> find / -name * > xargs less > grep Keyword 

Good lord no.  I can't even begin to point out what's wrong with
that[1].

If you're using GNU grep, and maybe other variants you can just use:

        $ grep -rF keyword .

That greps, (r)ecursively, for any mention of the literal string
(that's what -F does) "keyword" in any file from the named directory
(in this case the current directory) down.

Other useful variants include:

        $ grep -rilw regexp . # print filenames of recursively matched
                              # files.
        $ less $(grep -rFl string .) # open matching files in less(1)

To do it the way you wanted to, the correct syntax would be:

        $ find / -type f | xargs grep Keyword

as suggested just now by Mark Musone.

jason

[1] : Okay, for a start you are trying to use output redirection
      operators to create pipes between processes; all that that
      command line will do is make a file in the current directory
      called "xargs", and maybe one called "grep".
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