- Mac command to search for a word how to#
- Mac command to search for a word mac os x#
- Mac command to search for a word manual#
I wouldn't wait too long but if you're searching a small folder it should be very quick. The number of search results will appear at the footer if the footer is shown.įYI I've noticed that sometimes it takes time to do a search and sometimes there is no indication Finder is doing anything.
Mac command to search for a word mac os x#
Ĭhoosing "Any" may find more matches, while "Text" will find files Mac OS X determines fall under the category "Text". To the right side of those options is a "Save" button with a plus sign next to it.Ĭlick the plus sign. Otherwise click on the folder name next to it. If you want to search your whole computer click on "This Mac". You may need to stretch out the window to see it.Īfter you start typing or press enter you'll see a section below the search box to the left that says,
Mac command to search for a word manual#
Still, even peons like me can use it to do simple line-searches! If you’re braver than I and would like to delve into it more deeply, just open Terminal and type man grep at the prompt to read more of its manual page.Navigate to the folder you want to search if you have one.Įnter the term you want to search in the search bar in the upper right hand corner. The grep command is actually incredibly powerful, and some of its functionality is admittedly way over my head. So for example, if you wanted to find lines containing “scary sewer clown,” you’d type this:
Mac command to search for a word how to#
You have to know a bit about how to use file paths to really understand what you’re doing here, but in plain English, my command above says “find lines matching ‘test’ in the ‘Grep.txt’ document on Melissa’s desktop, then put the resulting data into a file called ‘testfile.txt,’ also on her desktop.” Be careful, though, that you aren’t pointing Terminal to an existing file! If you already have a “testfile.txt” on your desktop, this command will overwrite it.įinally, one more detail-if your search term contains any special characters (such as spaces, say), you’ll have to put a backslash in front of them to make Terminal interpret them correctly.
Or if you’re more fancy, you could use a right-angle bracket (“>”) to “pipe” the info out into a new file by adding on to your command, like this: When you get to this point with your own grepping, which is probably a word I just made up, you can copy and paste the resulting data out of Terminal. If I then press Return on my keyboard, the Terminal window will fill up with the lines that match my search! Neat! Once I do that, the program’ll fill in the path to the file for me, easy-peasy. An easy way I can do this is by making sure to type a space after my search term, and then I’ll drag and drop the file I want to search onto the Terminal window, like so: So I’ve entered the grep command followed by my search term-“test”-and now I just have to tell Terminal which file to run things on. What I’ll do first is open Terminal, of course-it lives in my Applications > Utilities folder-and after it gives me a prompt to start (ending with a dollar sign), I’ll type this: If what I need to do is take all of the lines containing “test” and separate them from the lines containing everything else, that’s really simple for grep. Boy, I am just stupidly bad at coming up with random words.
0 kommentar(er)
