Searching directories for a line of text

[scrubbicus]

There's a line of text I need to find inside a whole bunch of directories. Is there any script I can use for this? Or can someone help me start it out?

 

Thanks.

[trq]

Does it need to be done in php? grep is the perfect tool for this.

 

grep -Hn 'text to search' /dir/*

[Maq]

You can easily dump the results in a text file too, just add

 

> file_name.txt

 

to the end of the command.

[scrubbicus]

this is for personal use so however it can be done i have a really messy directory i need to find something in

[scrubbicus]

I'm confused with the

 

grep -Hn 'text to search' /dir/*

 

 

[trq]

Whats confusing about it? Its a Linux comamnd that will search through all files contained within /dir looking for the text 'text to search'. Upon finding the words 'text to search' it will print the file name, line number the text was found on, then the line itself.

 

Of course, you never mentioned what OS your using so this command might not be a great deal of help.

[scrubbicus]

I'm using Windows

[trq]

Then you'll likely need to write a script that will loop through each file within your directory using scandir and foreach, read each file into a string using file_get_contents, search this string for your search term using either strstr or preg_match and if the term is found place the file name into an array.

 

You can then loop through the array to list all files containing your search term.