find multiple patterns in multiple files bash

Question

I'm trying to find multiple patterns (I have a file of them) in multiple differents files with a lot of subdirs. I'm trying to use exit codes for not outputting all patterns found (because I need only the ones which are NOT found), but exit codes doesn't work as I understand them.

while read pattern; do grep -q -n -r $pattern ./dir/ if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then : #echo $pattern ' exists' else echo $pattern " doesn't exist" fi done <strings.tmp

It would be useful to show a sample of your file strings.tmp. Are you trying to match regular expression patterns or fixed strings? How exactly is the code not working? Please edit your question to provide these details. — Tom Fenech
– Tom Fenech, Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 11:16

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-26 14:36:41Z

2

You can use this in bash:

while read -r pattern; do grep -F -q -r "$pattern" ./dir/ || echo $pattern " doesn't exist" done < strings.tmp

Use read -r to safely read regex patterns
Use quoting in "$pattern" to avoid shell escaping
No need to use -n since you're using -q (quiet) flag

edited Nov 26, 2014 at 14:36

answered Nov 26, 2014 at 11:00

anubhava

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4 Comments

Stan Over a year ago

yeah, thx, command works by itself, but doesn't work in cycle. I mean it's ok when I take non-exist pattern and check it, but checking it in a loop doesn't work..

anubhava Over a year ago

There is no reason for it to not work in loop. Show content of strings.tmp in question.

Stan Over a year ago

test.hello test2.world and similar strings on each line

Stan Over a year ago

ok, i found, the problem was in dots in strings, which are interpreted as a special regexp symbol. just added -F flag for this

Ponmani Palanisamy · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-26 11:50:22Z

@anubhava's solution should work. If it doesn't for some reason, try the following

while read -r pattern; do lines=`grep -q -r "$pattern" ./dir/ | wc -l` if [ $lines -eq 0 ]; then echo $pattern " doesn't exist" else echo $pattern "exists" fi done < strings.tmp

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