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Dominique
Asked: 2018-05-16 01:08:16 +0800 CST

How to find in different kinds of files

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I'm working on a Ubuntu Windows app on my Windows-10 PC, the result of uname -a is the following:

Linux DOMINIQUEDS 4.4.0-17134-Microsoft #48-Microsoft Fri Apr 27 18:06:00 PST 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I'm doing some C++ development, and I'd like to know which source files (*.cpp or *.h) are including the file Sample.h, so I launched following command:

find ./ -name "*.cpp" -or -name "*.h" -exec grep -i "include" {} /dev/null \; | grep "Sample.h"

This seems not to be working: only the *.h files, containing include and Sample.h on the same line, are given.

However I know for sure that the -o construction for finding different kinds of files is correct:

find ./ -name "*.cpp" -or -name "*.h"

=> here I get a list of *.cpp and *.h files.

This leaves me with two possibilities:

  • Either the behaviour is correct: the -exec parameter is only used on the last find result. In that case, can somebody tell me how I can perform the -exec on all find results?
  • Either the behaviour is wrong. In that case, does somebody know if this is a general Ubuntu problem/Windows-10 Ubuntu app problem/... and if any solution can be expected and when?

Thanks in advance

command-line find windows-subsystem-for-linux

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    However I know for sure that the -o construction for finding different kinds of files is correct:

    find ./ -name "*.cpp" -or -name "*.h"

    True, but the precedence of -or is not that high. From man find:

       Please note that -a when specified implicitly (for example by two tests
   appearing  without an explicit operator between them) or explicitly has
   higher precedence than -o.  This means that find . -name afile -o -name
   bfile -print will never print afile.

    So:

    -name "*.cpp" -or -name "*.h" -exec grep ...

    Is like:

    -name "*.cpp" -or ( -name "*.h" -exec grep ... )

    And not like:

    ( -name "*.cpp" -or -name "*.h" ) -exec grep ...

    You need:

    find . \( -name '*.cpp' -o -name '*.h' \) -exec grep -H '#include.*Sample\.h' {} +

    (I assume you used /dev/null to make grep print the filename? The -H option does that.)

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  2. With modern grep, you don't need find at all e.g.

    grep -r --include='*.cpp' --include='*.h' 'include' . | grep 'Sample\.h'

    or - better (given that the order of the search terms is unambiguous)

    grep -r --include='*.cpp' --include='*.h' 'include.*Sample\.h' .
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