Question

I’m new to bash scripts (and the *nix shell altogether) but I’m trying to write this script to make grepping a codebase easier.

I have written this

#!/bin/bash
args=("$@");
for arg in args
 grep arg * */* */*/* */*/*/* */*/*/*/*;
done

when I try to run it, this is what happens:

~/Work/richmond $ ./f.sh "\$_REQUEST\['a'\]"
./f.sh: line 4: syntax error near unexpected token `grep'
./f.sh: line 4: `       grep arg * */* */*/* */*/*/* */*/*/*/*;'
~/Work/richmond $

How do I do this properly?

And, I think a more important question is, how can I make grep recurse through subdirectories properly like this?

Any other tips and/or pitfalls with shell scripting and using bash in general would also be appreciated.

Answer 1

The syntax error is because you’re missing do. As for searching recursively if your grep has the -R option you would do:

#!/bin/bash
for arg in "$@"; do
   grep -R "$arg" *
done

Otherwise you could use find:

#!/bin/bash
for arg in "$@"; do
   find . -exec grep "$arg" {} +
done

In the latter example, find will execute grep and replace the {} braces with the file names it finds, starting in the current directory ..

(Notice that I also changed arg to "$arg". You need the dollar sign to get the variable’s value, and the quotes tell the shell to treat its value as one big word, even if $arg contains spaces or newlines.)