How to Search for a String Inside Files via Terminal
If you need to locate a specific piece of text but don’t know exactly where it’s stored, you can use the grep command from a Linux terminal. This is a powerful tool that performs fast and recursive searches across directories.
Command to use
grep -rnw ./ -e "string"
Explanation of parameters
- grep: command used to search for text inside files
- -r: performs a recursive search through subdirectories
- -n: shows the line number where the string is found
- -w: matches exact words only (avoids partial matches)
- ./: sets the current directory as the starting point
- -e "string": defines the keyword or phrase to search
Practical example
If you want to search for the keyword database_password inside all files in your project directory, use the following command:
grep -rnw ./ -e "database_password"
The system will list all matching files, along with the line number and full file path where the string was found.
