How do I find all files containing specific text on Linux?

Answer 1

If you strictly want to use find then use find + grep:

find /path/to/somewhere/ -type f -exec grep -nw 'textPattern' {} \;

Steps:

1. Use find to search files,
2. Execute grep on all of them.

This gives you the power of find to find files.

• Use -name Pattern if you want to grep only certain files:

find /path/to/somewhere/ -type f -name \*.cpp -exec grep -nw 'textPattern' {} \;

You can use different options of find to improve your file search.