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https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16956810/how-do-i-find-all-files-containing-specific-text-on-linux?page=1&tab=votes#tab-top

Do the following:

grep -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e 'pattern' -r or -R is recursive, -n is line number, and -w stands for match the whole word. -l (lower-case L) can be added to just give the file name of matching files. Along with these, --exclude, --include, --exclude-dir flags could be used for efficient searching:

This will only search through those files which have .c or .h extensions:

grep --include=*.{c,h} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern" This will exclude searching all the files ending with .o extension:

grep --exclude=*.o -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern" For directories it's possible to exclude a particular directory(ies) through --exclude-dir parameter. For example, this will exclude the dirs dir1/, dir2/ and all of them matching *.dst/:

grep --exclude-dir={dir1,dir2,*.dst} -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern" This works very well for me, to achieve almost the same purpose like yours.

For more options check man grep.