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Using grep (or some other utility), is it possible to find all matches of a regular expression in a folder (searching the text of each file?) I want to find every match of the regular expression zenity within a specific folder, so that I can find the file that contains the string zenity.

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Alternatively, how can I find all matches of a regular expression in a directory? – Anderson Green Dec 11 '12 at 4:33

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If you're using GNU grep, you can use -r.

grep -r zenity directory

Otherwise, if your grep implementation does not have any options for recursion, you can use find and grep:

find directory -exec grep -H zenity {} +
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Will this search the folder recursively, and is it the same as grep -R zenity directory? Does capitalization matter, in this case? (It was written this way before the answer was edited.) – Anderson Green Dec 11 '12 at 4:37
@AndersonGreen Yes, and yes. -r and -R are the same in GNU grep (-r is merely portable to other implementations). – Chris Down Dec 11 '12 at 4:38
How would the command be altered if I wanted to search for a regex instead if a string? – Anderson Green Dec 11 '12 at 4:40
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@AndersonGreen zenity is a regex. By default, GNU grep uses BRE. – Chris Down Dec 11 '12 at 4:42
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Beware that GNU grep -r follows symlinks when descending directories, which is generally not what you want. Note that grep implementations are more likely to support -r than -H – Stephane Chazelas Dec 11 '12 at 7:09

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