How can I use grep to show just filenames on Linux?

Question

How can I use `grep` to show just file-names (no in-line matches) on Linux? I am usually using something like: find . -iname "*php" -exec grep -H myString {} \\; How can I just get the file-names (with paths), but without the matches? Do I have to use `xargs`? I didn't see a way to do this on my `grep` man page.

Answer 1

Well, here's a brute force kinda way ... pipe your output into some combination of cut / sort to get a unique sorted list of files that contain the pattern you're searching for. Sounds like that's what you're looking for.

See example and output below:

## show me all C source files that contain a #define definition

find . -iname "*.c" -exec grep -H "^#define" {} \; | cut -d: -f1 | sort -u

./AlexandraK/calc.c

./AlexandraK/calendar.c

./AlexandraK/pyramid.c

./AntonioM/argtester.c

./AntonioM/structs.c

./AntoniqueR/calendar.c

./AntoniqueR/calendar2.c

./AntoniqueR/calLab3Problem2.c

./AntoniqueR/pyramid.c

./AntoniqueR/pyramid2.c

./AR/pyramid.c

./ChrisB/pyramid.c

./ChrisB/t3.c

...... ......

I can't think of a clever way to make this sort of thing the responsibility of grep (or find, for that matter).

Answer 2

Are you trying to find myString in the file name or the file content?

If the former, it's:

find . -print | grep myString

If the latter, it's:

grep -Rli myString .

Please feel free to reach out for clarification