How to loop through all files in a directory and find if a value exists in those files using a shell script

Question

I have a directory PAYMENT. Inside it I have some text files.

xyx.txt
agfh.txt
hjul.txt

I need to go through all these files and find how many entries in each file contain text like BPR.

If it's one I need to get an alert. For example, if xyx.txt contains only one BPR entry, I need to get an alert.

possible duplicate of [count all occurrences of string in lots of files with grep](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/371115/count-all-occurrences-of-string-in-lots-of-files-with-grep) — tripleee, Oct 07 '13 at 15:39

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

6

You do not need to loop, something like this should make it:

grep -l "BPR" /your/path/PAYMENT/*

grep is a tool to find lines matching a pattern in files.
-l shows which files have that string.
"BPR" is the string you are looking for.
/your/path/PAYMENT/* means that it will grep throughout all files in that dir.

In case you want to want to find within specific kind of files / inside directories, say so because the command would vary a little.

Update

Based on your new requests:

I need to go through all these files an find how many entries in each file like BPR.

If its one I need to get an alert. For example, if xyx.txt contains only one BPR entry, I need to get an alert.

grep -c is your friend (more or less). So what you can do is:

if [ "$(grep -c a_certain_file)" -eq 1 ]; then
    echo "mai dei mai dei"
fi

edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

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answered Oct 07 '13 at 14:04

fedorqui

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Did you change `/your/path` to your real path? If you are in `PAYMENT`, you can simply do `grep -l "BPR" *`, for example. – fedorqui Oct 07 '13 at 14:09
Sorry brother, now its working. i have change it. but i did a small mistake :(. im in rush, i have to complete it within 1 hour. – Nevin Thomas Oct 07 '13 at 14:12
But ths is not the solution that i need. sorry about my bad explanation in my question – Nevin Thomas Oct 07 '13 at 14:24
`grep -c` will count the ocurrences. For the `i need to get an alert`, please be more specific. – fedorqui Oct 07 '13 at 14:29

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 07 '13 at 14:10

i need to go through all these files an find is there an entry like 'BPR'

If you are looking for a command to find file names that contain BPR then use:

echo /path/to/PAYMENT/*BPR*.txt

If you are looking for a command to find file names that contain text BPR then use:

grep -l "BPR" /path/to/PAYMENT/*.txt

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

0

Give this a try:

grep -o BPR {path}/* | wc -l

where {path} is the location of all the files. It'll give you JUST the number of occurrences of the string "BPR".

Also, FYI - this has also been talked about here: count all occurrences of string in lots of files with grep

edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

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answered Oct 07 '13 at 14:33

Greg Gauthier

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How to loop through all files in a directory and find if a value exists in those files using a shell script

3 Answers3

Update