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I've got several different directories that contain different versions of some files. I want to count a symbol in all versions of the same file. Here is an example of the hierarchy.

directory
    version1
        1_file.txt
        2_file.txt
        ...
    version2
        1_file.txt
        2_file.txt 
        ... 
    ...

I've tried the following:

symbol=\>

for i in 1 2 3; do
    grep -roh $symbol $i\_file.txt | wc -w;
done
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  • 1
    add a */ before the $i in the grep and you are done (if your cwd is directory) and you don't need the -r flag. – ikrabbe Jul 9 '15 at 20:11
  • You don't need loop at all: grep -oh "$symbol" */{1..3}_file.txt | wc -w. Also -r switch is redundant, perhaps just grep -roh "$symbol" . | wc -w is sufficient for you. – jimmij Jul 9 '15 at 20:23
  • You also have an extra backslash before file.txt on the grep line – Jeff Schaller♦ Jul 9 '15 at 21:55
  • I believe there's a POSIX "-c" option to grep to print a count of matching lines for each input file. surely that must ..count for something? – Theophrastus Jul 9 '15 at 23:59
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find . -name \[123]_file.txt -exec cat {} + | tr -sc \> \\n | wc -l

...will work for sequences of your single character example. But if the string is more complex, then is probably a good idea to go with the -only GNU switch to grep. Like:

find . -name \[123]_file.txt -exec grep -o \> {} + | wc -l
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