Nico wrote:

I have to search all the files in a directory and its subdirectories and their subdirectories for a string.

I can search a directory at a time with fgrep 'string' *.*, but this is taking ages to do for every dirictory. Is their a way to grep recursively through the directories? I could not find anything like that in the manual.

Here is my perl script that does this: #!/usr/bin/perl # rgrep - recursive grep use Getopt::Std; require "finddepth.pl"; getopts('lih'); $opt_h and usage(); $pat=shift or usage(); $d=shift or usage(); -d $d or die "$d is not a directory\n"; finddepth($d); sub wanted { -f $_ or return; # we only want plain files: -z _ and return; # but no empty files: -B _ and return; # and no binary files: open(IN,$_); while(<IN>) { ($opt_i ? /$pat/i : /$pat/) or next; $opt_l and do { print "$name\n"; last }; print "$name: $_"; } } sub usage { die "Usage: rgrep [-l] [-i] pattern ($pat) directory ($d)\n" } -- Hartelijke groet, Wybo Dekker ___________________Servalys Analytical Chemistry Services__________________ wybo@servalys.hobby.nl | Deilsedijk 60 | tel +31-345-652164 www.hobby.nl/~servalys | 4158 CH Deil, The Netherlands | fax +31-345-652383 - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archiv at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>