Linux command: How to 'find' only text files?

Question

After a few searches from Google, what I come up with is:

find my_folder -type f -exec grep -l \"needle text\" {} \\; -exec file {} \\; | grep text
         


        

Answer 1

Although it is an old question, I think this info bellow will add to the quality of the answers here.

When ignoring files with the executable bit set, I just use this command:

find . ! -perm -111

To keep it from recursively enter into other directories:

find . -maxdepth 1 ! -perm -111

No need for pipes to mix lots of commands, just the powerful plain find command.

• Disclaimer: it is not exactly what OP asked, because it doesn't check if the file is binary or not. It will, for example, filter out bash script files, that are text themselves but have the executable bit set.

That said, I hope this is useful to anyone.