Directory wide search replace

Change foo to bar for all php files.


find . -name "*.php" -print | xargs sed -i 's/foo/bar/g'


I know this file is in my filesystem somewhere


$ locate xorg.conf


/\ this will find your xorg.conf and will run quicker than find from root

Searching in files

Search for files containing the string "lookfor"

find . -type f -exec grep -i "lookfor" {} \; -print


Recursive find files and ...

Find all files of type CR2 and then delete them.

Note: The -print0 and -0 these options force the commands to use null terminators instead of spaces therefore you can remove files with spaces in the name.


find . -name *.CR2 -print0 | xargs -0 rm

Need to apply CHMOD command to only files that have a specific name recursively

Xargs to the rescue!

find -name fish.txt | xargs chmod 755



Clean all pyc files recursively:

find . -name "*.pyc" -exec rm -rf {} \;

Finding a single file in multiple jar files

this script copied from:
http://www.devdaily.com/blog/post/java/shell-script-search-search-multiple-jar-files-class-pattern


#!/bin/sh

LOOK_FOR="codehaus/xfire/spring"

for i in `find . -name "*jar"`
do
   echo "Looking in $i ..."
   jar tvf $i | grep $LOOK_FOR > /dev/null
   if [ $? == 0 ]
   then
     echo "==> Found \"$LOOK_FOR\" in $i"
   fi
done