Overview
grep is a command I used casually, so I decided to investigate it more thoroughly.
Basics
grep search-pattern filename
You can use wildcards, so for example, if you want to target all files in the current directory, you can do it like this:
grep "foo" ./*
If you want to include directories under the current directory, use the -r option.
grep -r "foo" ./*
Options
Here are some commonly used options.
-i
- Ignore case distinctions
-v
- Select non-matching lines
-n
- Display line numbers with output lines
-l
- Display file names with matches
-L
- Display file names without matches
-r
- Include directories in the search
-w
- Search for whole words (exact match)
Practical Use
OR Search
grep "foo\|bar" ./*
You need to escape with \.
AND Search
grep "foo" ./* | grep "bar"
Exclude Specific Directories
grep "foo" ./* --exclude-dir=vendor
