Using Grep to find a string inside a file (Linux)

Grep is a tool that is used often by system administrators – including myself, however I often have to double check the syntax online – as a result this post is to help me find out how and you of course.

first I recommend to change to the directory that you think or know the file containing the text is in:

• To find the string michael in any file type “grep michael *         #this will return a the files if any are found within the directory
• To find the string michael in any file and search recusively in directories under where you are type  “grep -R michael *”

Grep is one of the best tools available to an administrator especially for checking log files out and finding regular patterns.