How can I use grep to find a word inside a folder?

In Windows, I would have done a search for finding a word inside a folder. Similarly, I want to know if a specific word occurs inside a directory containing many sub-directories and files. My searches for grep syntax shows I must specify the filename, ie grep string filename .

Now, I do not know the filename, so what do I do? A friend suggested to do grep -nr string , but I don't know what this means and I got no results with it (there is no response until I issue a ctrl + c).


grep -nr 'yourString*' .

The dot at the end searches the current directory. Meaning for each parameter:

-n            Show relative line number in the file
'yourString*' String for search, followed by a wildcard character
-r            Recursively search subdirectories listed
.             Directory for search (current directory)

grep -nr 'MobileAppSer*' . (Would find MobileAppServlet.java or MobileAppServlet.class or MobileAppServlet.txt ; 'MobileAppASer*.*' is another way to do the same thing.)

To check more parameters use man grep command.


grep -nr string my_directory

Additional notes: this satisfies the syntax grep [options] string filename because in Unix-like systems, a directory is a kind of file (there is a term "regular file" to specifically refer to entities that are called just "files" in Windows).

grep -nr string reads the content to search from the standard input, that is why it just waits there for input from you, and stops doing so when you press ^C (it would stop on ^D as well, which is the key combination for end-of-file).


GREP : Global Regular Expression Print/Parser/Processor/Program.
You can use this to search the current directory.
You can specify -R for "recursive", which means the program searches in all subfolders, and their subfolders, and their subfolder's subfolders, etc.

grep -R "your word" .

-n will print the line number, where it matched in the file.
-i will search case-insensitive (capital/non-capital letters).

grep -inR "your regex pattern" .
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