Search file contents recursively and display sorted by date modified

Question

I am trying to set up a file search which fulfils all of the following:

1. Search recursively within a directory which includes wildcards (ex: /home/user/level_1/*/level_3/*/level_5/ ... should search within "level_5" and all its subdirectories)
2. Search contents of a file (ex: "text in file")
3. Define a filename to search (ex: script.js) (might be able to be combined with #1?)
4. Display results with path and context of search string (ex. /home/user/level_1/level_2/level_3/level_4/level_5/script.js Here is the text in file ... exact format can be different but should contain this information. Timestamp is not required. Would be a bonus if instead of the full path, it only displayed the directory which is represented by level_2 in the example above, but it's not a requirement.)
5. Display results sorted by file modified date, from oldest to newest.

I have this command below which fulfils 1-4.

grep -r --include=\script.js "text in file" /home/user/level_1/*/level_3/*/level_5/

Any ideas to include the 5th? I've seen various explanations to accomplish similar things with find or using zsh but I've not been able to put it all together.

Answer 1

Since you're using zsh, it should just be a matter of:

grep -H 'text in file' /home/user/level_1/*/level_3/*/level_5/**/script.js(.Om)

Where **/ matches any level of subdirectories, the . qualifier restricts to regular file (like GNU grep does with -r), and Om Orders in reverse by modification time (like ls -rt). Add the D qualifier if you also want to look for hidden ones (like GNU grep's -r does).

-H (a GNU extension, like -r or --include) makes sure the file name is printed even if only one file is found by zsh.

To print the level 2 directory instead of the file path, still with GNU grep, you can do:

for f (/home/user/level_1/*/level_3/*/level_5/**/script.js(N.Om))
  grep -H --label=${f:h5:t} 'text in file' < $f

Where :h5 takes 5 head components (the /home/user/level_1/level_2 in /home/user/level_1/level_2/and/more...), and :t the tail of that (level_2).

To also include the timestamp, you can use zsh's stat builtin to retrieve it:

zmodload zsh/stat
for f (/home/user/level_1/*/level_3/*/level_5/**/script.js(N.Om)) {
  stat -LF%FT%T.%3.%z -A t +mtime $f
  grep -H --label="${f:h5:t} ($t)" 'text in file' < $f
}

Here with timestamps formatted in their standard unambiguous format with ms precision like 2022-12-01T09:30:00.895+0000, but you can adapt the format to your liking with -F (uses strftime() formatting).