# Find All Files Containing a Specific String in Linux

> Use grep with the -rnw flags to recursively search for a text string across all files and subdirectories in Linux, with line numbers and whole-word matching

**URL:** https://sentry.io/answers/find-all-files-containing-a-specific-string/

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## The Problem

Using Linux, how can I find all files containing a specific string of text?

## The Solution

You can do this using [`grep`](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grep), a search utility built into most distributions of Linux. For example, to search for the string "hello world" in the files stored under `/home/alice`, you can use this command:

```sh
grep -rnw "hello world" /home/alice
```

* `-r` means search recursively, so `grep` will exhaustively search through all subdirectories in `/home/alice`.
* `-n` means provide the line numbers of matches.
* `-w` means match whole words. This means that the search will not match constructions like "ghello worldy".

This command should provide output like the following, specifying the file, the line number, and the matched line:

```
/home/alice/helloworld.py:3:print("hello world")
```

To learn more about `grep`, open its [manual page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_page) by entering `man grep`.

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*Source: [sentry.io/answers/find-all-files-containing-a-specific-string/](https://sentry.io/answers/find-all-files-containing-a-specific-string/)*