How to use the grep result in command line?

Question

When I use grep to find some text which I need, it will display lines containing a match to the given pattern.

For example,

# grep -r ".*Linux" *
path0/output.txt:I hope you enjoyed working on Linux.
path1/output1.txt:Welcome to Linux.
path2/output2.txt:I hope you will have fun with Linux.

then, I want to edit the file path2/output2.txt, hence, I type vim path2/output2.txt.

But, I don't think it is an effective way.

How can I copy the path after grep?

Answer 1

These are safe ways to find all files with Linux (lower and upper case).

xargs -a <(grep -rlZi Linux *) -0 vim
grep -rlZi Linux *| xargs -0 sh -c 'vim "$@" < /dev/tty' vim
grep -rlZi Linux *| xargs -0 vim # you need to run reset after this command 

There are differences between GNU xargs and BSD xargs so might not work on MacOSX.

• -Z and -0 options are for NULL delimited filenames
• -l for outputting the filenames of the files that match.
• -i match lower and uppcase.
• -o on bsd xargs will do the same as the "sh -c" part

Answer 2

vim `grep -r ".*Linux" * | cut -f1 -d":"`

backticks are for command substitution. | is for piping output of grep to cut. -d":" says cut based on delimited :. -f1 says the first field after cutting.

Answer 3

You can nest your grep command in as an argument to vim .... The grep command will produce the list of files all as a single argument to vim, when it get's expanded. Also you can simplify your search criteria to just ' Linux' for the examples you've given, it's not necessary to include the .* wildcard.

List of files

This command will generate the list of files for vim.

$ grep -lr ' Linux' *
path0/output.txt
path1/output1.txt
path2/output2.txt

You can nest this inside of a command substitution block ($(..)), like so:

$(grep -lr ' Linux' *)

You can use echo to see what this list will end up looking on the command line when passed to vim:

$ echo $(grep -lr ' Linux' *)
path0/output.txt path1/output1.txt path2/output2.txt

Putting it all together

$ vim $(grep -lr ' Linux' *)
3 files to edit
...

With this approach you just need to be careful if your list of files is going to be extremely long. But in general this is highly unlikely.

Answer 4

Good editors let you run grep inside.

In Vim, run :grep -r ".*Linux" .

In Emacs, run M-x grep and type ".*Linux" -r .