Skip to main content

LINUX How to Search for Files and Folders via SSH

In some cases you would need to find the location of a given file or to search for a certain text in all files under a directory. SSH provides two different commands, which can be used to accomplish this. In order to search for a file location you can use the find command. Find is a very powerful tool and accepts various arguments allowing you to specify the exact search term (i.e search by name, by type or even by modified time).
For example, to search for a file called myFile.txt under the current folder (and all subfolders), you would need to use the following command:
find . -name myFile.txt
If you are uncertain about the file name or would like to match a part of the name, you can use a wildcard pattern:
find . -name “myFile*”
If you would like to list only directories and leave all files out of the result:
find . -type d
Or if you want to filter only files modified for the last 2 days, you would need to use:
find . -mtime -2
You can also search for a given text in the files content as well. The command you should be using in this case is ‘grep’ . Grep is a very powerful tool and accepts various command line arguments. For a full list it is recommended to check the manual pages by typing ‘man grep’.
An example of using grep to find a certain text can be found below:
grep  “database” configuration.php
The above command instructs grep to look for the string “database” in configuration.php file and display the containing line.  If you don’t know which file contains the text, you can use:
grep -r -H “database” *
This will make grep look recursively (-r option) and provide the result in human readable format (-H option) for the string “database” in all (*) files under the current working directory.
To only list the file names containing the string you are searching but omit the line containing it, you can use the -l argument:
grep -l “database” *
This will display the filenames containing the word database, but will not actually list the line containing it.
Grep can also be used to filter the results from other commands. For example, the line below will only output configuration.php result:
ls -la | grep configuration.php
In some rare cases, you would not like to use find or grep. For example, to find a certain file in the whole server, it would be best to use an alternative command -- whereis or which:
whereis perl
or
which perl
The execution of the above commands will locate the perl binary and display the full path(s) to it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unix / Linux - Special Variables

W e will discuss in detail about special variable in Unix. In one of our previous chapters, we understood how to be careful when we use certain nonalphanumeric characters in variable names. This is because those characters are used in the names of special Unix variables. These variables are reserved for specific functions. For example, the  $  character represents the process ID number, or PID, of the current shell − $echo $$ The above command writes the PID of the current shell − 29949 The following table shows a number of special variables that you can use in your shell scripts − Command-Line Arguments The command-line arguments $1, $2, $3, ...$9 are positional parameters, with $0 pointing to the actual command, program, shell script, or function and $1, $2, $3, ...$9 as the arguments to the command. Following script uses various special variables related to the command line − #!/bin/sh echo "File Name: $0" echo "First Parameter : $1" echo "Second Parameter :...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lambda Function with Amazon SNS

  Amazon SNS is a service used for push notification. In this chapter, we will explain working of AWS Lambda and Amazon SNS with the help of an example where will perform the following actions − Create Topic in SNS Service and use AWS Lambda Add Topics to CloudWatch Send SNS text message on phone number given. Requisites To create Topic in SNS Service and use AWS Lambda Add Topics to CloudWatch, we need not follow the steps given below − Create Topic in SNS Create Role for permission in IAM Create AWS Lambda Function Publish to topic to activate trigger Check the message details in CloudWatch service. To send SNS text message on phone number given, we need to do the following − Add code in AWS Lambda to send message to your phone. Example In this example, we will create a topic in SNS. When details are entered in the topic to publish, AWS Lambda is triggered. The topic details are logged in CloudWatch and a message is sent on phone by AWS Lambda. Here is a basic block diagram which...
Post a Comment
Read more

Building the Lambda Function

AWS Lambda function executes a code when it is invoked. This chapter discusses all these steps involved in the life cycle of AWS Lambda function in detail. Steps for Building a Lambda function The lifecycle of Lambda function includes four necessary steps − Authoring Deploying Monitoring Troubleshooting Authoring Lambda Code AWS Lambda function code can be written in following languages − NodeJS Java, Python C# Go. We can write code for AWS Lambda using the AWS console, AWS CLI, from Eclipse IDE, from Visual Studio IDE, serverless framework etc. The following table shows a list of languages and the different tools and IDE that can be used to write the Lambda function −   NodeJS :  AWS Lambda Console | Visual Studio IDE Java : Eclipse IDE Python : AWS Lambda Console C# : Visual Studio IDE | .NET core Go : AWS Lambda Console Deploying Lambda Code Once you decide the language you want to write the Lambda function, there are two ways to deploy the code − Directly write the code in...
Post a Comment
Read more