Grep command to find files containing text string and move them

Question

I am able to locate files in a folder containing a specific text string using this command:

grep -lir 'string' ~/directory/*

How do I move the files that appear in the above result to another location?

Answer 1

As always, beware of grep -r. -r is not a standard option, and at least in GNU grep's implementation, it follows symbolic links when descending the directory tree, which is generally not what you want and can have severe implications if for instance there's a symlink to "/" somewhere in the directory tree.

In the Unix philosophy, you use a command to search directories for files, and another one to look at its content.

Using GNU tools, I'd do:

xargs -r0 --arg-file <(find . -type f -exec grep -lZi string {} +
  ) mv -i --target-directory /dest/dir

But even then, beware of race conditions and possible security issues if you run it as one user on a directory writable by some other user.

Answer 2

Use xargs in concert with mv's third syntax: mv [OPTION]... -t DIRECTORY SOURCE...

grep -lir 'string' ~/directory/* | xargs mv -t DEST

Be careful about files containing special characters (spaces, quotes). If this is your case, filtering the list with sed (adding quotes around filenames with s/^/'/;s/$/'/) might help, but you'd have to be sure, these quotes won't appear in the filenames. GNU grep has the -Z/--null option to NUL-terminate filenames.

An alternative to the third syntax for mv is using xargs with the placeholder string (-I).

Another option is command substitution - $( ) or backticks `` (in bash) as mentioned in ire_and_curses' answer.

Answer 3

If your file names don't contain any special characters (whitespace or \[*?), use command substitution:

mv `grep -lir 'string' ~/directory/*` destination/