Linux – How to recursively find a .doc file that contains a specific word

bashcatgreplinux

I'm using bash under Ubuntu.

Currently this works well for the current directory:

catdoc *.doc | grep "specificword"

But I have lots of subdirectories with .doc files.

How can I search for, let's say, "specificword" recursively?

Best Answer

Use find for recursive searches:

find -name '*.doc' -exec catdoc {} + | grep "specificword"

This will also output the file name:

find -name '*.doc' | while read -r file; do
    catdoc "$file" | grep -H --label="$file" "specificword"
done

(Normally I would use find ... -print0 | while read -rd "" file, but there's maybe a .0001% chance that it would be necessary, so I stopped caring.)

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