Do the following:
grep -Rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e 'pattern'
-ror-Ris recursive ; use-Rto search entirely-nis line number, and-wstands for match the whole word.-l(lower-case L) can be added to just give the file name of matching files.-eis the pattern used during the search
Along with these, --exclude, --include, --exclude-dir flags could be used for efficient searching:
-
This will only search through those files which have .c or .h extensions:
grep --include=\*.{c,h} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern" -
This will exclude searching all the files ending with .o extension:
grep --exclude=\*.o -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern" -
For directories it’s possible to exclude one or more directories using the
--exclude-dirparameter. For example, this will exclude the dirsdir1/,dir2/and all of them matching*.dst/:grep --exclude-dir={dir1,dir2,*.dst} -rnw '/path/to/search/' -e "pattern"
This works very well for me, to achieve almost the same purpose like yours.
For more options, see man grep.