grep specific filetypes on MAC

Question

I have a Mac OS X snow leopard. I am using the xterm terminal to grep specific string using this command grep -R --color=auto setHeader *.js but when I run this command I get the error saying

grep: \*.js: No such file or directory

So my question is how can I grep for a specific filetype on Mac?

Answer 1

grep --include=*.js -R . --color=auto setHeader

Since the example given uses "file type = file extension", this should just work.

Answer 2

This one works for me on Mac OS 10.8:

grep --include=*.js -r setHeader .

Answer 3

The best way to do that is to combine the find and the grep command:

find . -name "*.js" -exec grep --color=auto setHeader {} \;

Answer 4

The problem is the "-R" flag. When using that, you need to specify a directory. You'd be better off using a find command:

find . -name "*.js" -exec grep "setHeader" '{}' \;

If you want to use grep, just use "." instead of "*.js" for the file pattern.

Answer 5

The error message says that there are no '*.js' files in your current directory. If you want to traverse a directory tree, then you could do this:

find <startdirectory> -name '*.js' -exec grep --color=auto setHeader '{}' ';'

Of course you need to fill in the correct startdirectory, you can use . to denote the directory you're currently in.

Answer 6

This one works for me

mdfind -name .extn | grep .extn$

Where extn is the file type you are searching for (in my case .tre) and of course $ is end of line. The grep doesnt work inside quotes ''