grep print relative file path when doing a recursive search

Question

I'm trying to find out which version of hibernate the project depends on (this is orthogonal to my question).

We have a parent project with several sub projects, and I know this is defined in one or more pom.xml. The problem is that when it prints a match all it's telling me is the line and that it was found in pom.xml, I want to know which sub project pom.xml.

How can I get grep to print the relative path (absolute would work too but less pretty)? If it's not possible alternative suggestions welcome.

$ grep -rI -3 org.hibernate pom.xml

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 30 '14 at 17:56

3

I'd suggest using a combination of find, xargs and grep:

 cd top-dir
 find . -print -name 'pom.xml' -print0 | xargs -0 grep -l pattern

I put in -print0 / -0 option so that special characters in the found directories are protected and properly processed.

The above will list the filename(s) relative to the top-dir matching the patterm.

answered Apr 30 '14 at 17:56

mdpc

6,834

this should be more efficient than xargs, but accomplishes the same (including the too many args problem) find . -name 'pom.xml' -exec grep -3 'org.hibernate' '{}' + – xenoterracide May 01 '14 at 15:09

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 01 '14 at 01:40

0

grep --with-filename -rI -3 org.hibernate pom.xml

From the man page:

       -H, --with-filename
          Print  the  file  name for each match.  This is the default when there is more than one file to
          search.

answered May 01 '14 at 01:40

Dan Garthwaite

8,176

this is the default behavior, it does not give the relative or absolute path, I can't tell the difference between one pom.xml and another with this (or maybe this option is ignored...) . Also this is not in my man page... are you sure this is for a freebsd grep and not gnu grep? – xenoterracide May 01 '14 at 14:59
GNU Grep. That would be the issue, here. – Dan Garthwaite May 01 '14 at 19:51

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 15 '20 at 14:52

Another solution is to use a globstar pattern, i.e. a recursive glob, in combination with the grep -H option to include the file name in the output.

shopt -s globstar
grep -H org.hibernate **/pom.xml

Unlike the recursive grep (-R), with this approach, the -H option does include the file path in the output.

Hint: you might find it useful to add shopt -s globstar to your .bashrc to permanently allow recursive globbing.

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 04 '22 at 13:20

0

Just use the following command:

cat */demo.txt | grep -Rli 'demo'

This command will return the path of file.

edited Jan 04 '22 at 13:20

AdminBee

22,803

answered Jan 04 '22 at 11:28

Abdullah Manzoor

1

grep print relative file path when doing a recursive search

4 Answers4