How can I do a regex search recursively from a directory?

Question

Basically I want a command that can do the following:

find /path/dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -l "foo"

Is there an emacs command to do this? If not, then is there a convenient keybinding that I can make? I tried to do the following:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-f") 'find)
(defun find (dir string)
  (interactive)
  (shell)
  (insert "find")
  (insert dir)
  (insert "-type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -l")
  (insert string)
)

But it doesn't seem to work. It gives me "wrong type argument: commandp, find".

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 05 '20 at 02:10

1

The following does that and presents the results as a dired buffer:

M-x find-grep-dired

You'll also want to know about:

M-x rgrep

(which doesn't support the -l option to grep, but is usually what I want from a recursive regexp search.)

answered Jan 05 '20 at 02:10

phils

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 05 '20 at 02:20

@phils answered the question. This is just to say that the version of find-grep-dired in library find-dired+.el provides a bit more than the vanilla version:

It has two optional args, DEPTH-LIMITS and EXCLUDED-PATHS.
The interactive spec uses read-from-minibuffer, read-file-name, dired-regexp-history and find-diredp-default-fn.

find-grep-dired is an interactive compiled Lisp function in find-dired+.el.

(find-grep-dired DIR REGEXP &optional DEPTH-LIMITS EXCLUDED-PATHS)

Use Dired on the list of files in DIR whose contents match REGEXP.

The find’ command run (after changing into DIR) is essentially this, where LS-SWITCHES is (car find-ls-option):

find . \( -type f -exec grep grep-program find-grep-options -e REGEXP {} \; \) LS-SWITCHES

Thus REGEXP can also contain additional grep options.

Optional arg DEPTH-LIMITS is a list (MIN-DEPTH MAX-DEPTH) of the minimum and maximum depths. If nil, search directory tree under DIR.

Optional arg EXCLUDED-PATHS is a list of strings that match paths to exclude from the search. If nil, search all directories.

When both optional args are non-nil, the find command run is this:

find . -mindepth MIN-DEPTH -maxdepth MAX-DEPTH \( -path EXCLUDE1 -o -path EXCLUDE2 ... \)
       -prune -o -exec grep-program find-grep-options -e REGEXP {} \; LS-SWITCHES

where EXCLUDE1, EXCLUDE2... are the EXCLUDED-PATHS, but shell-quoted.

How can I do a regex search recursively from a directory?

2 Answers2