How to Search Text With grep in Linux
grep searches input (files or piped text) for lines matching a pattern and prints those lines.
Published September 30, 2026
grep searches input (files or piped text) for lines matching a pattern and prints those lines.
Key points
- grep -i performs a case-insensitive search
- grep -r searches recursively through every file in a directory tree
- grep -n shows the line number of each match, useful when searching source code
Example
grep -rn "TODO" ./src