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up vote 4 down vote favorite

When using find, how do I return the file name and the line number when searching for a string? I manage to return the file name in one command and the line numbers with another one, but I can't seem to combine them.

File names: find . -type f -exec grep -l 'string to search' {} \;

Line numbers: find . -type f -exec grep -n 'string to search' {} \;

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2 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

The command line switch -H forces grep to print the line number, even with just one file.

% grep -n 7 test.in
7:7
% \grep -Hn 7 test.in
test.in:7:7

   -H, --with-filename
          Print the filename for each match.
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thank you, that worked! –  Danny_Joris Oct 27 '12 at 21:17
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This answer could be improved by pointing out that the -H flag to grep is a nonstandard GNU extension and posing an alternative approach for non-GNU systems. –  kojiro Oct 28 '12 at 3:43
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up vote 5 down vote 
find . -type f -exec grep -n 'string to search' /dev/null {} +

(or with GNU grep, see the -H option)

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both + and -H work great, thank you! –  Danny_Joris Oct 27 '12 at 21:17
    
And related to this answer: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3682/… –  Danny_Joris Oct 28 '12 at 1:42
    
+1 Right, because causing grep to have multiple filename args would force it to output the matched filenames. Clever! –  kojiro Oct 28 '12 at 3:47
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