bash how to search for a string in all files in given directory using grep command

Question

my code till now is. I am a beginner.

count=0
for f in $ls do
count+= grep -c "classes" $f
done
echo $count

Answer 1

Just use

grep -R <stringToSearch> <dirName>

e.g to search "text" in current directory and all the files inside

grep -R "text" .

If you want to get number of occurrences use wc -l as pipe

grep -R "text" . | wc -l

Answer 2

grep -rnw <Directory_path> -e "Pattern"

Example, if you want to find "helloWorld" in all the files of the directory ~/abc/xyz, then run the following command-

grep -rnw ~/abc/xyz -e "helloWorld"

To search a string "HelloWorld" in the current directory, use the following command-

grep -rnw . -e "helloWorld"

Answer 3

I believe find will be the BEST option for this requirement, could you please try following and let me know if this helps you.

find . -type f  -exec grep -i "test" {} + | wc -l
OR
find . -type f  | xargs grep -i "test" | wc -l

You could mention your path in place of DOT above too.

Answer 4

count=0
for f in *
do
if [ -f "$f" ] #check if that file is regular file
then
    count=$(($count+$(grep -c "classes" "$f")))
fi
done
echo $count