2.1.6 File and Directory Selection

‘-a’

‘--text’

Process a binary file as if it were text; this is equivalent to the ‘--binary-files=text’ option.

‘--binary-files=type’

If a file’s allocation metadata or its first few bytes indicate that the file contains binary data, assume that the file is of type type. By default, type is ‘binary’, and grep normally outputs either a one-line message saying that a binary file matches, or no message if there is no match.

If type is ‘without-match’, grep assumes that a binary file does not match; this is equivalent to the ‘-I’ option.

If type is ‘text’, grep processes a binary file as if it were text; this is equivalent to the ‘-a’ option.

Warning: ‘--binary-files=text’ might output binary garbage, which can have nasty side effects if the output is a terminal and if the terminal driver interprets some of it as commands.

‘-D action’

‘--devices=action’

If an input file is a device, FIFO, or socket, use action to process it. If action is ‘read’, all devices are read just as if they were ordinary files. If action is ‘skip’, devices, FIFOs, and sockets are silently skipped. By default, devices are read if they are on the command line or if the ‘-R’ (‘--dereference-recursive’) option is used, and are skipped if they are encountered recursively and the ‘-r’ (‘--recursive’) option is used. This option has no effect on a file that is read via standard input.

‘-d action’

‘--directories=action’

If an input file is a directory, use action to process it. By default, action is ‘read’, which means that directories are read just as if they were ordinary files (some operating systems and file systems disallow this, and will cause grep to print error messages for every directory or silently skip them). If action is ‘skip’, directories are silently skipped. If action is ‘recurse’, grep reads all files under each directory, recursively, following command-line symbolic links and skipping other symlinks; this is equivalent to the ‘-r’ option.

‘--exclude=glob’

Skip files whose base name matches glob (using wildcard matching). A file-name glob can use ‘*’, ‘?’, and ‘[’...‘]’ as wildcards, and \ to quote a wildcard or backslash character literally.

‘--exclude-from=file’

Skip files whose base name matches any of the file-name globs read from file (using wildcard matching as described under ‘--exclude’).

‘--exclude-dir=dir’

Skip any directory whose name matches the pattern dir, ignoring any redundant trailing slashes in dir.

‘-I’

Process a binary file as if it did not contain matching data; this is equivalent to the ‘--binary-files=without-match’ option.

‘--include=glob’

Search only files whose base name matches glob (using wildcard matching as described under ‘--exclude’).

‘-r’

‘--recursive’

For each directory operand, read and process all files in that directory, recursively. Follow symbolic links on the command line, but skip symlinks that are encountered recursively. This is the same as the ‘--directories=recurse’ option.

‘-R’

‘--dereference-recursive’

For each directory operand, read and process all files in that directory, recursively, following all symbolic links.

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